Of course if HE damaged the door I would expect him to pay. If he said
door is damged prior to start I'd take it back to HD. Not a big issue.
Why should I pay 30% more for materials anyway? I'm paying for
skilled labor that I cant/wont do.

thetiler wrote:
wrote:

needed. Wife and I went to HD picked a nice one out and brought it
home. What do you really think the installer would do but jack up the
price of the same door he bought at HD? He came installed it I gladly
paid himfor his labor.

If the door was damaged, in the installation, who pays?
If he calls you over and says "hey the window glass is
cracked" you'll claim he cracked it trying to install it.
All kinds of problems can arise, and I'll tell you from
experience, when a customer thinks they're going to
lose money, suddenly they're quick to throw out blame.

I don't know how your "door installer" pays taxes, insurance
licensing fees, corporation fees, accountant fees, etc
etc just charging for an installation.
It is fair and common to mark up materials at least 30%
to cover the cost of above items.

The "labor" part is simply like a "wage" to an employee.
An ordinary employee gets his "wage", but doesn't have
all the other multitude of expenses.

Plus the contractor has a lot of running around, consulting,
estimating, running his business etc time involved that he
isn't getting paid for.

thetiler