"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message
...
(Doug Miller) writes:
In article , ender
(Jeffrey J. Kosowsky) wrote:

I agree that if reputation is excellent and price quote is reasonable
then no need to break quote into part and labor. My complaint is more
against the deceptive practice of breaking up pricing into parts and
labor when the breakout is really into (parts + labor) + labor.

There's no deception involved. You can't seem to get your mind around the
simple concept that only the *total* price matters. How the contractor
chooses
to break it down is irrelevant.

Suppose I bid on a job for you, and we agree on a total price of $500. Then,
when I present my invoice showing $200 for materials (that cost me $100) and
$300 for labor, you complain that I'm overpricing my materials -- but if I
had
presented an invoice showing $100 for materials and $400 for labor, you'd be
okay with that???

You seem to not be able to read what I write. I have said many times
that I have nothing wrong with total price bid. Just if you are going
to break it into parts and labor, then you should do so in a way that
reasonably represents the two components. Otherwise, at best you are
providing useless information and at worse you are misleading me into
believing that your labor is more competitively priced than your
competitors and that the difference in materials cost is due to true
difference in choice of materials.

This is Turtle.

No Jeffrey, The only reason we are still talking about this issue is you don't
like the mark up on parts and material and You not being told about it. You want
like a hvac contractor to tell you he buys the condenser for $411.00 and will
install it for $1,200.00. Then you take that info and tell the next contractor
that you will give him $411.00 for the condenser and you think $300.00 labor
seems good enough and take it or leave it. The good contractor will walk off,
but the hvac hack will take you up on it and just throw it in and collect the
money with no warrenty. Then when you want some one to come fix the mistake. You
have to call the good contractor back which will charge you out your ass for
fixing it because your stuck with no warrenty. All good contractors know a hack
has been there by just looking at the equipment and we all think a like. If you
pull the price game on one contractror. They tell each other and wait for you.
If you was just screwed by a hack out of just getting bids from all. I / We will
try to cut the cost of fixing the screw up as low as we can.

If you think you breaking new ground on the pricing game , well son , it has
been done back in the 1950's till today and the result is still the same. 1/3 of
my HVAC business is just fixing screw up by Hacks and Pricing Game players.
Tuesday i will be replacing a split system on a $400k home that a hack put in
and was under sized & Poorly installed. The system is 3 years old and will pull
it out and install it correctly in his guest house and replace the main unit
with a new 4 ton 15 seer. Now the hack sure give him a good price on the system
but it did not work like it should have.

I know it is tuff on you have to be not told all the details of the job but the
world and the industry will go on without you. If you did not know it but your
the best help the Hacks of this industry has because of wanting to know all
price and not look at who is doing the job. The Hack's love Price Game player
for they can cut the price down to do the job without worring about quality of
the labor being presented. If all, customer really started looking at quality of
the installation. Hacks would just get out of the business for they would have
hell getting jobs.

TURTLE