Recent experience: called a HVAC contractor to fix a heating furnace, they spent 1 hour convincing us to scrap the current furnace and install a new one; once we told him "no" at least 10 times, he spent 30 minutes "diagnosing" the problem while on the phone with somebody with technical knowledge; then he quoted $250 to replace a part that I could buy on Ebay for $15. Finally, I bought the part and replaced it myself.
replyI understand being annoyed at a sales pitch, but this sounds like about 3-4 hours of work for the contractor, which comes out to about $80/hour. That doesn’t sound so unreasonable to me.
replySorry, I skipped some details. They had a pre-agreed $180 "diagnostics fee", which we paid, then they tried to charge $250 on top of that for the part. The contractor had no technical knowledge and kept video-conferencing the office for help. He had lots of sales training, though.
replyEven trying to sympathize with the contractor is ontologically evil.
replySounds like sociopaths being allowed to do sociopath things problem, rather than supply and demand problem.
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