Michael & Son Services Charlotte

We live in Fort Mill, SC... just a mile or so from Charlotte. I called Michael & Son on Friday, 8/21/15, to schedule an appointment. I explained that I had two faucets in the kitchen of our 8 year old house that needed to be replaced with two Brizo (high end Delta) faucets that I had purchased. I asked roughly how much it would cost. The lady in the call center was nice, but said the technician/plumber would have to come out to give an estimate. She said it was impossible to quote anything over the phone. She stated there was a $29 dispatch fee to which I agreed and they scheduled it for Monday, 8/24/15. On Monday they rescheduled me for Tuesday, 8/25/15.



When the guy arrived on Tuesday, he said it would be $602 to install the two. He explained it's a flat rate $286.50 each to install a customer supplied faucet. Really? $600 for about an hour of work? Every $100/hr = $200,000 per year... So the labor is billed out at a rate of $1.2MM/year. I could see maybe $100 each + dispatch but $602?



There was no reason that the lady in the call center could not have told me that the charge for installing two customer supplied faucets would be at LEAST $602 ($286.50 for each faucet plus the $29 dispatch fee) and maybe more depending on what the technician/plumber found when he got here.



The plumber on the truck made it very clear that it was a flat rate per faucet and that we could not even use coupon if we had one because the parts were customer supplied (i.e. since Michael & Son couldn't gouge me on the price for parts, there were no discounts allowed on the $600/hr in labor.)



The company knows that they wouldn't get dispatched nearly as much if people knew the outrageous rates they are charging per hour for labor... and coming out first to quote also puts the customer in the position of being "over the barrel"... gives Michael & Sons more leverage to get you to agree to those high prices.



Obviously, I sent the plumber back with his $29 dispatch fee. But they wasted 5 days of my time, their time to come out, and my $29 fee. They could have saved us all a LOT of time and frustration if they had just let me know that it was going to cost at least $602 which could easily have been done when I scheduled the appointment.