Hydros Plumbing & Heating

The following is a response to *** complaint. I will address each area of his complaint separately.

I will start by saying that the problem, in the opinion of Hydros Plumbing, is a lack of official declaration of terms between the business and the customer. All terms were verbal, and due to the nature of the relationship between *** and myself I felt that verbal terms were appropriate. Hydros Plumbing should have had *** sign our "New Customer Contract" agreement form which is used to create fairness between the customer and Hydros. We did not do that and that is our fault.

The following explanation is for context purposes. *** and I have known each other for a long time, approximately since 2010. He and I had been acquaintances, then friends, then room mates, then after he moved we had not spoken until he needed help with his new home. *** has asked me for my help deciding what was happening with his heating system, I told him I would help. It was decided that I would travel to *** new property to inspect his property. Property/ mechanical inspections are something I do often and are billable services. KM travelled are billable, also are hours while travelling and hours while working on the job.

I will paste the complaint below and address each area of the complaint now:

Complaint:

Over billed. Billed $85 for one person drive time. Mileage billed was $0.20 per km over the agreed amount.

Response:

Our labour rate is $85.00 per hour, this is standard. We charge our full labour rate and a per/km rate while travelling for the following reasons. 1. we must pay our employees while they work, so we must charge our customers an hourly rate also. The per/km rate accounts for our fuel/ vehicle expenses. If we did not charge both of those rates we would be acting economically irresponsible and our business would suffer. For example. If we had to drive 6 hours to do 2 hours of work and could only charge .55 cents per km and no labour to our customer we would take a loss. Therefor we absolutely have to charge both rates. *** is right that he was over charged by 20 cents per km, the reason for this is that we had changed our per/km rate and it was merely an in house error which we are happy to over turn.

Complaint:

They billed for 7.75 hours of work for only doing 2 hours of work on site.

Response:

Our standard billing practices in reference to projects like this are as follows: $85.00 per man per hour, 55 cents per km (at the time this was our rate), plus cost of supplies and any expenses incurred while working on a job, Under certain circumstances consulting fees may apply, interest paid after 30 days, if a customer wants a quote they must request a quote, payment is due upon receipt, unforeseen issues are not the responsibility of Hydros. These are all outlined in our New Customer Contract.

I travelled 330 km therefore 181.50 is owed
I accumulated 7.75 hours of time spent that day.
3.25 hours of the 7.75 were travel hours at $85.00 per hour, equaling a total of 267.25
That leaves 4.5 hours worth of labour on site. *** says that I was only working for 2 hours. That leaves 2.5 hours to account for. During this time *** and I reviewed his property, turned on his heater in his garage, and basically continued an inspection of his place. this included making a plan for a new heating system which I was to quote *** on. I can understand how being billed for this type of consultation could be confusing if specific terms weren't discussed before hand and signed off on. So to give *** the benefit I will take off 2.5 hours.

Complaint:

Hydros came out for a site inspection. The owner said "this visit is on the house". Free of charge. But continues to threaten to invoice for it.

Response:

During my first visit, because we had been friends, I did tell *** that that visit was free. I don't know why I did this, it was irresponsible of me. It's because of the free visit that I felt free to bill for my entire second visit. I assumed that because I had been generous and given my time, expertise, and paid for my fuel without billing *** a cent that he would see that value and not have a problem with any of the services that I had provided. These free services had a value of 542.75 (per/KM= 181.50 + 4.25 labour/travel hours=361.25)

*** says I continue to threaten to bill him for the free visit. What prompted me to tell *** via text that I was going to bill him for the free visit was something he had said to me. He told me that I told him I would only ask for "fair pay for fair work". My rebuttal to that was that he was right and that it was only fair to me to then get paid for my first visit. Saying that I continue to threaten is and exaggeration, and makes it sound like I'm badgering him which isn't the case. We haven't spoken since Oct 15th 2017.

Complaint:

Invoiced amount totaled $1,005.95 for 2 hours of labour from 1 person and 330 km of mileage. Should have only been $400-500.

Response:

I addressed our billing practices above and why we bill how we bill. If further billing explanation is necessary please let me know.

Now that I have addressed the complaints I will address *** request for resolution.

DesiredSettlementID: Billing Adjustment
Correction on mileage to $0.55. Cannot invoice for labour and mileage at the same time. Labour hours corrected to 2 hours as the owner agreed to do in text message. Original site inspection to continue to be at no charge as offered by owner of the company.

Our adjustment offer is as follows:

3.25 travel hours at $85.00 per hour= $276.25
2 on site labour hours = $170.00
330 km travel at 55 cents per km = $181.50
Total without taxes = $627.75
Total with taxes = $696.80

This settlement fits in line with *** request he had sent me by text, on Oct 14 2017. which I will attach.

***

We have not billed for the first visit and that visit will remain to be free.

I feel this is fair, we have taken time to see *** point of view and understand his concerns. Thank you for helping us find resolve.

We will send this bill to *** today. Payment is due upon receipt.