Response from Housman's Aluminum & Screening Inc
Sir, we sincerely apologize about your experience with our business, but we have a standard workflow how we operate this business. We value our customers highly and by no means did we intend to appear unprofessional to you. We usually schedule free estimates/appointments so we can come out and see the site and make sure we are looking at the right things. It can be troublesome discussing and pricing jobs over the phone. The girls are very busy with an average of 500 calls per day in our office and things can get hectic from time to time. We do not give prices over the phone (because our office staff are not salesmen, which we have 4-5 going around town all day long offering free estimates) but we do have a $100 minimum for any jobs. Which was just raised from $75, which was in effect since 1995. When customers ask for pricing, this is always something the ladies ought to mention (minimum treshold), so the customer is aware of that fact that the job is no less than $100 in any case. That is not a service charge that gets added to any services, but is rather a minimum threshold of work that has to be reached. We try to work safe and by rules and regulation and therefore we send always two workers to at least 90 percent of the jobs. Quite frankly you won't find another screening contractor with heavier and better insurances than us; not in this county anyway. That is unfortunately the cost of doing business by safe, licensed and insured contractor. I personally deal with contractors coming to my house, as well and a service charge in the vicinity of 60-125 seems what most contractors charge for small service jobs. (even if it's a 10 minute call -- it took hours to plan for the job, get there and drive somewhere else) I can guarantee you, that your business makes less than $10 in profit (very well break even or are "red" quite often) on $100 jobs and is merely an attempt to keep our name out there.