$1,246.00 is a ripoff. Offer him $500.00 with "paid in full" written on the check or you'll see him in court. He won't go to court for twelve hundred bucks; he can't afford to.

I'm sorry but my not always real hand DH changed one in an hour or two. What ws the hourly rate supposed to be? I would offer a few hours of pay, not your fault the kids didn't know what they were doing.

Did they tell you an hourly rate, give an estimate, or even a ballpark at the beginning of the job? This should have at most been a few hours of work. Your should have charged THEM for hogging your house for 8 hours.

I did post this situation, asking about what to do. I just got the bill yesterday. My mistake was listening to Day One Kid, who I assumed knew what he was doing.

I gave both Day One Kid and Day Two Kid $20 (each). I also gave Day Two Kid a big! bag of snacks for the road (Welch's fruit chews, Costco nut bars, Clif bars, etc. worth probably $30) because he knew my son since they went to high school together.

Just looked at the bill again, and because some of you mentioned hours, I looked at how many hours were billed. Day One Kid billed for 7.5 hours! He was here 4.5 hours (and that includes the time when he left to drive to the local hardware store to get the light switch motion sensor). They charged me $85 for the light switch motion sensor, which they took with them on day two.

My mistake in not asking a price in advance. I picked them because the heating and cooling firm that we use (new ac/furnace unit requires periodic inspections for warranty) recommended them, as it was not something that they do.

I will be letting heating and cooling firm know about this. I am also going to be disputing the bill with the electrician firm. Thank you all. I want to be fair about this and liked the young men involved, but obviously, I don't want to be taken advantage of either.

Thank you all very much!

Some repair services charge for driving time.

An hourly rate (to me) assumes the person doing the work know what he’s doing. They’re charging you for his hours of confusion. I would do what Joe suggested.

Paying for driving time does not trouble me. Excessive time for an expert to figure out how to do their job is the problem. I would expect a handyman to perhaps need more time, for example, but I hired electricians. As RedRyder noted, the hourly rate should reflect the skill, and you should not be charged for hours of confusion.

I suspect that my project was deemed to be fairly standard (replacing an existing exhaust fan), so the less-experienced worker was given the task.

I had a situation similar to yours years ago. I hired an electrician to install a dedicated receptacle for an air conditioner in a house i had just bought. He told me it would cost around $400. When the work was done, he gave me a bill for over $900, and his justification was that the estimate he gave me was just for his labour, the materials (a 20 amp Square D QO breaker, about 40 ft of cable and a box, receptacle and cover plate) were extra. I told him that I could buy all that stuff for under $80 at the box store and wrote him a cheque for $480 and wrote "final payment" on the cheque. As I handed him the cheque, I told him if he wanted more money to go to small claims court. I never heard of him again.

Both people here are at fault. The electrician should have said in advance that his estimatate was for labor only. The poster shouldn't expect the electrician to determine what the job requires, give you a list so you could by the parts, and then install them.

The fault, mtvhike, is someone who doesn't bother to read before responding. You are confusing my situation with another. Perhaps you are watching too much MTV

Sorry, HU-910663146, I was actually responding to w0lley32.

No worries

In my case, the electrician came to the house, looked at my panel and looked at the location where i needed the receptacle to be installed before telling me it would cost around $400. I never expected him to give me a list of parts so I can go buy them for him to install. But he should have known roughly how much the parts he expects to need for the job cost.

I still haven't gotten the final bill for this. I complained about the original bills (I received 2--one for each day).