On The Ball Plumbing, LLC.

The first trip we came out, we attempted to blow out and rinse out the lines the best that we could. The well needed a filter, but we were not able to get a filter at the time due to the job being at the end of the day. We tried our best to try to get a shower up to proper pressure so that the...

customer could have a shower until we came back out. We sent out two plumbers for a total of about 5 hours on the first trip. My plumber charged for only 2 hours as he did not feel right about charging for the full 5 hours since we did not fully solve the problem.We returned to the customer with two plumbers. As every other company, we charge our rate per hour, per plumber. We did not give a quote other than our hourly rate. One plumber said that the "$400.00 quote" must have been misunderstood when we said that that would be the price to replace a shower valve. We blew out the lines, installed a filter on the well, and replaced some small parts in the tub/showers, sinks, and toilets to get them functioning properly. My plumbers got permission from the husband before doing any of this. Husband told us to get it taken care of as he wanted it to be in working order before they had family coming into town the following week. The wife was not home. We used our own parts. Customer never stated that they had parts for us to use or else we would have used them. My plumbers left the customers with a bill of $775.00 itemized with the labor, parts, and truck fee. Most plumbing companies and companies in general itemize their bills only by those three things. My plumbers were not given the request to have all parts listed at time of service. Our policy is to break the bill down by labor, parts, and truck fee. Not by each part installed. My plumbers would have given them a list at time of service without hesitation. We did not put any markup on the parts.  We sent out two plumbers to take care of the problem as it would have taken one guy the same number of labor hours to get the job done. We sent out two plumbers to be more efficient and timely. We tried to explain this to the customer. All companies charge their labor rate per hour per person. It is not profitable to, for example, send out 10 plumbers for only $80.00 per hour. My plumbers charged us 8 hours of labor total for the job for payroll. They charged the customer only 6 hours. We verified the time of arrival and departure with our GPS tracking. When customer called in asking for an "itemized" (meaning with each part used) invoice and with a concern for the bill on Friday night, we told her (the wife) that we would see what we could do with the bill and that we would talk to the plumbers about what they installed. We told her that we would return her call on Monday. We did not get the chance to return the call on Monday as the plumbers we needed to talk to were on scheduled jobs all day. On Tuesday we talked to the customer again, and again on Wednesday. The owner of our company attempted to make contact with the customer with the parts list and to discuss the invoice, but the customer did not come to the door. Only the children of the home.We lowered the bill to $500.00.