Is $500 a fair price for a wiring diagnosis only?
I have an irrigation company that I’ve used almost 5 years. I used to get the owner who is fantastic but now I get techs. That’s fine usually. I have two stations that stopped coming on within the last month. I call them out thinking it’s a valve or something. The tech is out walking my yard for 4.5 hours. He never fixed the problem but diagnosed it as old wiring that needs to be replaced. The owner called me and explained they tried switch common wires/jumping the system to avoid having to replace the wiring as it is about 200 feet to the valve around a pool enclosure and under a few wooden boards. Ultimately nothing worked. The owner admitted the tech was on the phone with him most of the time while he walked him through it. He even said he might come back over to look at it himself since it’s his specialty. Told me he would discount it since I’ve been a customer a long time. I got a $710 bill discounted to $500. Is there anyway that is a fair bill? I was a little shocked to get that bill when my system still doesn’t work. I feel they should have stopped after two hours or at least knocked on the door to ask me if they should keep going. I mentioned to owner and he double down on price.
I feel it should have been $3-400 for the time/attempts
Edit to add: we had already paid them a few years back for wiring tracing. So they should have known exactly the path. This is in central Florida if that changes anything