I recently had a repair man out to work on my furnace. I have an Armstrong 92.5 eff gas furnace, and it is about 7 years old. My honeywell smartvalve went bad. he said the valve would cost $629.00 to replace, plus the time it took to do it. I have looked up on the internet, and these valves are between $165.00 and $300.00. Is this sort of markup usuall, or did I get taken? The partnumber is sv9520h8042.
When I was running my own furnace repair business, I usually had a minimum 100% markup for expensive parts such as gas valves and such. Cheap parts were marked up several times their cost.
Did the repairman have the part you needed with him? If so, that's worth a lot. It means you get your furnace back on line right away rather than waiting days for the part to be located and another service call to be scheduled and paid for.
How did you pay for the labor on this service call? Was it a free diagnosis of the problem? That kind of come on is a racket.
Frankly, consumers are in a bad bargaining position when their furnace isn't working. You can look up the cost of a part on the internet at your leisure, but few people are going to be willing to be left in a cold house in order to do that and then shop around for someone to come out and install a part at a cheap price.
And it costs money to maintain inventories. I still have a basement full of furnace parts left over from my furnace repair business --- and I quit doing that work for the most part ten years ago.
So you want cheap parts? I have them available. YOU can buy them and hold onto them until you might need them!
You said that you got taken. That would imply he did the work and you actually got a bill from him. Yet you only gave us the cost of what he said just the valve would cost, and not what his time also cost. So did he or didn't he replace the valve?
Sounds like you encountered a flat rater. These guys have a fixed price for replacing a given part. It matters not if it takes them 10 minutes or 10 hours. For most repairs they are WAY higher than the time materials repair people.
Tags: repair, smartvalve, cost what, furnace repair, furnace repair business, repair business, service call, valve would, valve would cost, would cost
