Forbes Plumbing

THIS LETTER WAS MAILED TO THIS COMPANY ON OR ABOUT 12/7/18. RE: 07/26/18 INVOICE-***. On the date indicated, your employee arrived at the site at +/- 11am. After completing the job, he handed me the handwritten invoice at 1:58pm. I know this because I snapped a photo of that document next to my wristwatch, just after walking the few steps to my car. Using basic grade school math, I come up with slightly less than 3 hours of actual work time that day. However, you are attempting to charge me an extra hour for what? Assuming it is travel time, since when does it take an hour to get from your office in Dallas to my work site in Salem? I live 9 miles south of Dallas, and I can make the trip in roughly 40 minutes. And, don’t try to tell me that you are charging me for the round trip, because that wouldn’t be considered good business practice. On the day I scheduled the service, I asked your dispatch employee how travel time was determined. In fact, I specifically asked if I would be charged travel time from Dallas. He said travel time was split between calls, so that no one customer would be responsible for the additional distance. After receiving the bill, which included labor time for 4 hours, not 3 hours, I inquired with your staff about the up charge. The voice message I received about it said something to the effect that you charge travel time after crossing over the bridge into Salem. If that is the case, according to Google Maps, the travel time from that point to my address is 6 minutes. Assuming you double that time, it isn’t anywhere close to an additional hour. Judging from the two different versions of your travel time billing, and the third version that apparently was applied to my invoice, your company really doesn’t have a set policy on the matter. I paid your company for one-half of the extra hour, which under the circumstances was pretty generous of me. In reality, instead of paying you the extra $50, my cost for travel time should have been only $20 (since 12 minutes is 0.20 of 60 minutes). As such, you owe me $30.