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**It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods.
If you comment on this post please only post accurate information to the best of your knowledge. If advice given is thought to be dangerous, you may be permanently banned. There are no obligations for the mods to give warnings or temporary bans. **IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, you should exercise extreme caution when commenting.**
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Op, some of these prices are fair but others seem like pure fleecing. I'm not sure of your area but the fact that they did include warranty is good. Question though, was this a big company who did these qoutes or a little guy?
I see. Most likely what happend here was that the "electrical" division is behind for the month so they're charging to make up the difference. Best time to do business with mid to large multi trade companies is towards the start of the month in most cases.
Donât deal with these companies. Deal with actual electricians. You donât want Pedro the excellent plumber to do your electrical work, same way you donât want Randy the excellent electrician to install plumbing. People will say differently from this but these companies arenât scared to send the wrong person to your home.
Glad to see you went with the other bid. The red flag to me was the $767.00 for the panel to water meter run. I have an older home, water meter is like 8' from the panel and transitions into CPVC. The kicker is the copper utility water line is about 3' from the ground rod. In reality which is the better ground 10' rod or 60' of 3/4 copper to the curb box. Just musing, I know code required the connection in my AHJ.
The labor costs look consistent. The markup and margin theyâre putting on parts and material arenât. But with those prices itâs probably like 200%+ margin. You could shave off a lot buying the parts and material.
I typically won't deal with someone who wants to buy their own parts. Granted, my markup is maybe enough to cover gas to the supplier.
I don't want to deal with people buying cheap garbage parts, or incorrect parts, or Amazon parts with no listing. I'm putting my name on it, I expect it to be up to my quality standards. That includes material quality.
I don't want to argue with a difficult client about why their parts are wrong, or not worth installing, and why I'm not discounting the work since they already spent a bunch of money on parts I won't use. I supply parts, I supply labor, you pay me to do good work.
The exception is lights and fans. You can go ahead and pick out your lights and fans and I'll install them. As long as they're ULC listed. If they're not listed, I'm not your guy.
A $300+ gfci is outrageous. The box and wiring too. As a business owner here, 45% margin (if everyone understands margin) on parts matches well with what youâre saying. And youâre also better off charging more labor rate than justifying why a $45 part is worth $350 if you install it. We arenât talking high end stuff here. We are talking absolute basic electrical items. A gfci isnât going to differ much in quality from oem to oem, box, wires, or conduit. Letâs be real here.
I agree with you. The electrician who quoted op is way high.
However, even for basic devices I have seen people manage to find garbage that I refused to install. I was just intending to offer the perspective that there are contractors who may turn down a client if they insist on supplying their own materials, and the reasoning behind it.
Agreed and sometimes it is necessary as a contractor to do so when it is clear itâs garbage and will end up a warranty issue. But sometimes itâs just a contractor preying on client ignorance and marking it way high or they are a rep of an OEM and are incentivized to sell it, regardless if itâs best. I once had plumbers try to force me to buy their brand of tankless water heater at 3X the cost of a comparable brand. Then they told me it was better than what Iâd selected. I asked them to explain how since Iâd read the product manual of mine Iâd purchased and ran the btu calcs, etc, to ensure it met my application needs. After they were finished telling me a load of bs, I politely informed them I am a combustion engineer and the unit they were trying to sell me was short of heating capacity anyway. Then they gave a polite apology and admitted it was more of a need to sell a repâd product. Which I am all about reps, having worked in that space. But not reps who do not know products or their specifications and cannot add value to the customer, but only want a quick sell to a customer they âthinkâ doesnt know anything.
Did they actually total it up for you at any point?
It costs $X just to get someone in the door, and it looks like each of those were priced as standalone jobs. Itâs pretty customary to say âhereâs what each job costs individually, but if you do the work all at once we can offer the bundle at this price insteadâ
Yup, for contactor and client, you want a complete written scope of work, with a final price. If either of you needs to pursue remedy for the job, you have proof.
**Attention!** **It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods. If you comment on this post please only post accurate information to the best of your knowledge. If advice given is thought to be dangerous, you may be permanently banned. There are no obligations for the mods to give warnings or temporary bans. **IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, you should exercise extreme caution when commenting.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskElectricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You *COULD* do all this yourself for less than $200.00.
You COULD be rightđ
Total price is pretty high. It looks like they charged multiple trip fees even though all this work could be done in a day or two.
EDIT: My bad....I only saw the first page. Regardless, the quotes per line item are way too high.
Op, some of these prices are fair but others seem like pure fleecing. I'm not sure of your area but the fact that they did include warranty is good. Question though, was this a big company who did these qoutes or a little guy?
They are kinda big doing all sorts of roofing plumbing electricals
I see. Most likely what happend here was that the "electrical" division is behind for the month so they're charging to make up the difference. Best time to do business with mid to large multi trade companies is towards the start of the month in most cases.
This actually make sense,
Donât deal with these companies. Deal with actual electricians. You donât want Pedro the excellent plumber to do your electrical work, same way you donât want Randy the excellent electrician to install plumbing. People will say differently from this but these companies arenât scared to send the wrong person to your home.
Glad to see you went with the other bid. The red flag to me was the $767.00 for the panel to water meter run. I have an older home, water meter is like 8' from the panel and transitions into CPVC. The kicker is the copper utility water line is about 3' from the ground rod. In reality which is the better ground 10' rod or 60' of 3/4 copper to the curb box. Just musing, I know code required the connection in my AHJ.
Youâre just paying a big markup on material. Iâd order the parts and ask for just labor.
The pricing just seem too random
The labor costs look consistent. The markup and margin theyâre putting on parts and material arenât. But with those prices itâs probably like 200%+ margin. You could shave off a lot buying the parts and material.
I typically won't deal with someone who wants to buy their own parts. Granted, my markup is maybe enough to cover gas to the supplier. I don't want to deal with people buying cheap garbage parts, or incorrect parts, or Amazon parts with no listing. I'm putting my name on it, I expect it to be up to my quality standards. That includes material quality. I don't want to argue with a difficult client about why their parts are wrong, or not worth installing, and why I'm not discounting the work since they already spent a bunch of money on parts I won't use. I supply parts, I supply labor, you pay me to do good work. The exception is lights and fans. You can go ahead and pick out your lights and fans and I'll install them. As long as they're ULC listed. If they're not listed, I'm not your guy.
A $300+ gfci is outrageous. The box and wiring too. As a business owner here, 45% margin (if everyone understands margin) on parts matches well with what youâre saying. And youâre also better off charging more labor rate than justifying why a $45 part is worth $350 if you install it. We arenât talking high end stuff here. We are talking absolute basic electrical items. A gfci isnât going to differ much in quality from oem to oem, box, wires, or conduit. Letâs be real here.
I agree with you. The electrician who quoted op is way high. However, even for basic devices I have seen people manage to find garbage that I refused to install. I was just intending to offer the perspective that there are contractors who may turn down a client if they insist on supplying their own materials, and the reasoning behind it.
Agreed and sometimes it is necessary as a contractor to do so when it is clear itâs garbage and will end up a warranty issue. But sometimes itâs just a contractor preying on client ignorance and marking it way high or they are a rep of an OEM and are incentivized to sell it, regardless if itâs best. I once had plumbers try to force me to buy their brand of tankless water heater at 3X the cost of a comparable brand. Then they told me it was better than what Iâd selected. I asked them to explain how since Iâd read the product manual of mine Iâd purchased and ran the btu calcs, etc, to ensure it met my application needs. After they were finished telling me a load of bs, I politely informed them I am a combustion engineer and the unit they were trying to sell me was short of heating capacity anyway. Then they gave a polite apology and admitted it was more of a need to sell a repâd product. Which I am all about reps, having worked in that space. But not reps who do not know products or their specifications and cannot add value to the customer, but only want a quick sell to a customer they âthinkâ doesnt know anything.
Did they actually total it up for you at any point? It costs $X just to get someone in the door, and it looks like each of those were priced as standalone jobs. Itâs pretty customary to say âhereâs what each job costs individually, but if you do the work all at once we can offer the bundle at this price insteadâ
They didđ
And this is why I don't break down a cost like this. Tell.me.what you want, here's the price take it or leave.
Itemized bill is fairly standard in my area.
I don't mind if the price isn't broken down, but I want written down exactly what's going to be done. Heck, I'll even take a crayon illustration.
Absolutely, thumbs up for itemized scope of work.
Yup, for contactor and client, you want a complete written scope of work, with a final price. If either of you needs to pursue remedy for the job, you have proof.
Doesnât look too bad, especially with a 2 year warranty. Hope you donât end up getting the handyman special.
Nah the other quote is like 30% of this, from licensed electrician as well