Kelly Heating & Electric

Review: I was told by Kelly Service Tech that the labor charge would be $110.00/hr (Saturday/weekend rate) plus a trip charge, which I agreed to. He was at our home for slightly under 1 hr (replaced float on sump pump). Upon reviewing the bill, we noticed the labor was 1 1/2 hrs ($165.00) & there was a trip charge of $25.00. My wife called & spoke with the [redacted] and after several phone calls and a week later she was told that the Service Tech had told me that labor was charged from wherever he was coming from to his time back to Kellys shop. I clearly was not told this nor would I have agreed to pay $110.00/hr for driving time, in addition to the trip charge that I was aware of and charged for.Desired Settlement: 1/2 hour refund - $55.00 plus tax - as I was charged tax on the entire bill including the labor, trip charge, & the material.

Business

Response:

I just received the email in regards to the complaint above. We ran the report on the technicians vehicle GPS & they are correct he was in there driveway for exactly 1 hour. We do have to bill our travel time & it is accustom in our business to do so. This is not something that we just do….. it’s done by every contractor I know that bills Time & Material. If the customer feels that we can drive back and forth to people’s homes w/o billing for our time, they are mistaken as we would fall short of a few hours every single day. I feel our answering service does a good job at letting customers know all of the information needed for the nights and weekends when these calls come in.

The “Trip Charge” is what covers our vehicle cost ie: gas wear tear etc we use $25 in the nearby area and it goes up from there basing things at the .56 / mile allowed.

I have attached the GPS report & also the notes from the answering service. It appears they were upset because they paid someone (not us) to install this expensive pump and it failed. We try to provide an emergency service for people like this on weekends and nights and sometimes it frustrating when we respond, show up, fix their problem for them and in return they feel we are unfair in our price.

We typically try to reason with some kind of analogy with folks, we are all familiar with vehicle repairs and Dr. Visits. Mechanics and Drs charge a lot of money for their services and you as the customer have to go to them…… We on the other hand drive our vehicles and spend our time coming to you – typically for less money. I am not trying to be a smart allic about this, just trying to put our position into perspective.

Business

Response:

Trip Charge is not Labor, it is vehicle expense cost. Labor Billing is done port to port. Meaning when our Technician begins in route to the service call.... the clock starts ticking and ends with an estimated time to return to our facility or to the next call, whichever is closer.

When you read the GPS Report it will show the Travel & Stop Times

Consumer

Response: