FWIW, a friend of my tile guy (supposedly a "master plumber") is willing to do it for $150.

I'll do it for $9.95

$500-$750 is the going rate from an actually licensed and verified insured plumber. That includes sweated copper and replacing and cleaning up the lines a bit. If you don’t see, and verify, both a license and insurance, don’t even let them through the door. There are a lot of Hacks of All Trades and Masters of None out there. Worse, there are foolish homeowners who hire them.

Sorry, but I think $100-150 an hour is pretty rich for a plumber - but I know that's not unusual. An hour or so is pretty good guess. At $225 they are making plenty. At 500-$750 for about an hour's worth of work that really could be done by a skilled handyman is nuts.
BTW: Spare me all of the drivel about overhead and training and such. I know what's involved.
I also know that many of the guys going out on these jobs are not the highly-educated skilled tradesmen, etc, etc. A whole lot of them are schmucks who do stupid stuff like this and this and still charge like they are a brain surgeon.

Yeah Jake, the guy should work for peanuts. You have a $35,000 truck. $10,000 of truck stock, health insurance for your family, liability insurance, 401K, licensing fees, mandatory education, OSHA training, accounting fees, it's never ending. How many hours a day are you billable?

Then you say the guy should do a small job on a time & materials basis.

You have your head up your butt.

geoffrey_b Did you see the part about: "BTW: Spare me all of the drivel about overhead and training and such. I know what's involved." The dumbest nitwit can rationalize why they need 500-700 dollars to do a simple plumbing job.

Don't get me wrong, I think skilled trades should be able to make a decent living. But if you have THAT much overhead, unbillible hours, underutilized assets, etc. then you deserve to go out of business. That's poor business practices and not the customer's fault. They are not obligated to make up for a plumber's bad business decisions.

Look, if you go to the dentist and she charges you $700 for a routine teeth cleaning you would be pissed.. They could make those same arguments - even more so. They are doctors, have an expensive office building, x-ray machines about $100k each, dental equipment, the chair you sit in is about $5k, support staff, etc. Nonetheless, a routine cleaning here is $130-150,

Yes, I expect a reasonably skilled plumber to complete that job for a couple hundred bucks and be profitable doing it. If not, it's his problem... not the customers' problem.

Jake & Bob - so you should travel (time) to a home + look at the situation + give (without a warranty) an implied warranty that your work will be 'up to snuff'. Then you should fix it for minimal bucks.

If you can't do the work, and you have a willing person - do it. Don't bitch about the price.

geoffrey_b why are you insisting on rationalizing something that on its face makes no sense? $225 for that job isn't minimal bucks. A licensed plumber should be good with that as "filler" work or a job for a trainee. A skilled handyman could do it for half that and still make money.

I've dealt with the guys driving their $35k trucks calling themselves "plumbers". They're the same as the surgeon driving their $100K porshe, but without the skill and brain. So forget about 'em...with patience, this stuff is not even hard. Did someone say Youtube? It's a gold mind!

NYC $1000 minimum

Hah, interesting bump on this thread. That NYC price is pretty steep!

Just to confirm, I got mine done for $150 and it's been great. And because the guy didn't try ripping me off, I've hired him back for several other things (water softener install, pressure reducing valve install, and an irrigation line leak).

if it’s as easy as many of you think , please roll your sleeves up and have at it. after 4 or 5 hours when you can’t figure it out . Call a professional and stop complaining about the price

Buy all your HDMI cables at Best Buy too, guys. Pay MSRP at the dealership. Let your local insurance broker sell you a whole life policy. By all means, let yourself get raked over the coals any chance any chance you possibly can.

Youtube be is a "gold MIND"...? Not a gold mine haha wow, some of you people are insane. If plumbing were so easy then tell me why you're calling a plumber to begin with? What you may not realize is that the plumber walking through your front door is not the one making the big bucks...it's the company he works for that charges you an arm and a leg- then pays him a percentage, usually around 18% to start. So, you pay 500.00, he makes 115.00 to clean up sewer water, to wade through knee high water in your basement full of human feces to snake your drain, to go into attics in over 100 degree temperatures, and crawlspaces in 10 below degree temperatures- sometimes on a free estimate where he doesn't make a cent all for you to turn around and cuss him out for the price he is required to charge you. So yeah...next time ur at McDonald's cuss the cashier out for the cost of your cheeseburger lol my husband is a plumber and busts his a$$ harder than I've ever seen. Skilled trades are not easy people...that's why they are called "skilled" trades, you want quality work you call someone skilled, otherwise roll up your sleeves and do it yourself...it's not that hard right? Smh

The 2 things that can ruin a property in a heartbeat are fire and water. In many ways with tradesman, you get what you pay for. Many tasks people hire plumbers for are not super difficult but it does require knowledge and a particular set of skills. The more shower valve installs a plumber or handyman have done usually means they will be that much better and faster. $250 may mean 3 days, poor soldering, and loose trim. 500 may mean in and out in 3 hours and everything tight aligned and clean.

My guess is that the person who wrote this post has a 4 year degree. There are many of these type of individuals who resent trade people for making money beyond expenses. You see although they say they have respect for trades people deep down to them anyone who gets dirt under their fingernails for a living should not be making anywhere near as much money as a pencil pusher who went to an ivy League school.

So next time your house is flooding are your electricity doesn't work why don't you try calling your lawyer and see what they can do for you. Trades people are the machine that keeps people living in comfort throughout the world and deserve respect and deserve a very very good wage.

Also younger people now are not getting into the trades so get ready to pay even more money because the carpenters and electricians that were once plentiful, are becoming much more rare. And why should they get into the trades they're perfectly comfortable living in all your basements that many of you paid a carpenter to finish for you

@Jon Abeles

In all of my experiences with ”the trades” I have yet to encounter someone who has the social skills and wherewithall to show up on time; communicate with clarity; be honest; clean up after themselves; stay off their phone; not smoke on my property; much less actually come back to finish the job and do it right.

All these self-righteous responses by the ”professionals“ don’t seem to understand that their reputation is built on their own behavior and lack of integrity.

And at the end of the day, it takes ALL of us to bring comfort to the world. Remember that when the pencil pusher writes you your check.

I don't take checks, but I do understand what you mean. If that's your experience perhaps you are putting price ahead of many other factors. I don't smoke in other people's property and do my best to show up on time. There are times where I have to pick up materials (which I use my own money with a promise of reimbursement) can take longer than expected.

My point is that everyone deserves to earn a good livingliving

Handyman here. Just replaced a shower valve today with different circumstances, but similar to what OP is talking about. My 2 cents:

1. Trades people will most likely charge more than you think they should. This is due to many of the things people already mentioned in this thread, but also because you bought the material. Trades people often have products they like to work with because they are familiar with them. Familiar with how they install, how they perform, how they function. When you provide materials, you also remove one of the ways they pay for their cost of doing business - markups. You can judge the practice of marking up however you'd like (just like some people don't like tipping), but its standard throughout every trade you are ever going to hire. Some people are transparent about it, some are secretive. Either way, it's how everyone pays for the cost of providing any semblance of a guarantee.

2. There will always be a spread of cost for the trades. Think of it compared to a whole house - at some point, someone is going to build a house that is less expensive in order to sell it faster or more often. The only way to do that, is to compromise somewhere. That price compromise can happen in the quality, profit margin, or speed. The race to the bottom sinks all ships. When you undercut the markets evolved price, you cannibalize small business (think about Amazon compared to small local boutique shops, toy stores, or anything non-chain). If you take a loss, you wont stay in business. If you hide cost cutting measures, like hidden poor workmanship or speedily done work that will not last, you might win in the short term, but your reviews and your customers will reflect that over time. If you are able to outlast everyone else, run at a loss, and own the whole industry - well thats not good for anyone except you.

3. Costing more often means more value. The person may have been a poor salesman, but I would wager that they provided more than their competitor - cleanliness, documentation, warranty/guarantee, etc.

4. Understand that often a quick quote will be some standardized cost that the company or person is confident they can make a reasonable profit with over time. This may mean that jobs like yours, while simple seeming to you, sometimes are more complicated than anticipated. Yours may not have been, but the next one down the road might take a whole day and they would loose money. The subsidized model is similar to the way insurance companies price their products - obviously different in other ways since it's not a subscription model.

To those other people in the thread saying things like: "spare me the overhead' or "its on youtube, DIY it" or "my friends a master and says it should cost this"

You should be cautious when telling other people how to run their business. Your assuredness and sometimes smug responses, while protected by the anonymity or distance of online communication, it doesn't protect you from forming poor mental habits filled with logical fallacies. You come across as arrogant and ignorant. Imagine everyone one you've ever met in your life - that's a garbage sample size from which to pull an opinion when you speak to the crowd of the world online.