comments

First of all, it was a pleasure providing service for William and his wife. Mike, our technician, had a lot of great things to say about them both. Good people, and we hope to serve them again for appliance or television repairs. ---

For the record, we provided the customer with an up-front exact price for this repair after we diagnosed it, and the price was approved before repairs were completed. This was actually the second estimate (for the pump replacement) after our tech had spent considerable time trying to repair the pump for a lower price. Our technician cleaned out a fair amount of debris from the pump (which is typical of most washers) to try and avoid the higher cost of pump replacement. The pump was just worn out, so Mike explained the new cost for the pump replacement and the customer approved it. ---

Mike left the home and went to a local parts distributor to purchase the pump, then returned to the house and completed the repair. When all was said and done, we spent over an hour working on this appliance, and that doesn't include drive time to the home, or to the parts distributor and back to the home. ---

We scheduled this call for same-day service, and repaired it in one trip in a fast, efficient manner. We believe that the customer's time is worth a lot, and it's our goal to waste as little of it as possible. There are undoubtedly slower and less experienced technicians out there who could do this at a lower cost, but they are not factory trained, bonded and insured, and they definitely don't offer six months warranty on their work. ---

We do not charge a "per hour" rate, but if you were going to calculate what that rate would be if we did, you would have to consider the time involved to get to the customer's home, the time spent obtaining the part from our local parts distributor, and the costs of stocking parts on our service vehicle so that we can provide same-day repair service whenever that is possible. A lot went into this service call in terms of time and effort, including that of our dedicated customer service staff, to make sure that we were able to provide as excellent a service experience as we did. The alternative would have been a terrible service experience from people who don't care and really aren't interested in you or your problems, and we know that's not what you want. ---

As for the "Book" of prices, it's a real book used by thousands of appliance technicians that is comprised of a nationwide average of service prices based on the difficulty and time of a repair. To quote the website for this pricing guide, the primary elements that make up the prices in that guide are: "parts, time & labor, equipment, predictable and unpredictable circumstances surrounding specific jobs, inventory management, education/training, office staff, advertising, insurances, travel time to and from the customers home, and all service vehicle expenses." ---

For some technicians, these jobs take a lot longer and might involve multiple trips to your home (therefore multiple times that you have to be there at your home with them). Our technician is a lot better than the national average in terms of speed, care, and desire to fix it right the first trip, and we do not penalize ourselves for being good at what we do by underpricing excellence. ---

All in all, we're proud of Mike and the service he provides for our customers, and we hope we can continue to serve William and his family for many years to come.

Service Care Inc commented on 04/13/2012