My dispute is only in that travel time as it wasn't told to me, agreed upon, and they were 5 hours late making me miss my 8 hours of pay
. I don't totally disagree with you argument but their method of billing is not uncommon.
As for not knowing, when I called the company, I confirmed with the person who books appointments that service was $66 dollars an hour, x a 2 man crew, min of 1 hour would be billed. Never did she say billing started at their last site. If I knew that, I would of called around. There last site could of been 2 or 3 hours away, how would I know where there last site was? That would be a silly agreement for anyone to agree to.
Generally, since I do not charge an "service call fee" (which BTW is generally a charge to just chow up at the door, actual charges start from there) it is usually cheaper for me to charge the travel time. It ends up that the customer saves money. Now I suppose I could charge a service call fee, it would make me happy truthfully, I would get more pay but the customer ends up paying for the travel time one way or the other.
As for work, I work for a large company. I am hourly, but I bill my company or get paid for actual time worked - not travel time to my office.
I don't get paid for my drive to work either but by federal law, I do get paid for all my time AT WORK. That includes time driving or even waiting to go to another job once my day has started until it ends. What you suggest would be paramount to you not getting paid to walk across the room to pick up a file for your next "job".
When my furnance went out at 3am during the Winter. I got billed a flat rate for service, which started when the guy showed up. Not when he left his last job and finished when he got home. That is ridiculous billing system.
As I stated, my billing practice is very common and normal. Actually with the 3 am call, you would be (and legally I might add) be charged from the time you got me out of bed until I got home. This is an abnormal circumstance and allows different billing practices to come into play.
When I did onsite printer and computer repair, we billed when we actually showed up. What's next, my car needs an oil change and the shop bills me the time it takes me to drive my car to them for service??
You are mixing apples with oranges here. The oil change is obviously not the same situation but to bring it into the mix, consider this; if you had somebody come get your car to do the oil change and then bring it back, of course there would be some sort of charge for this, whether it was an itemized charge or nor is irrelevent, but it would be in the cost of the job somewhere.
Now when you did traveling repair, were you compensated for your drive time? If so, where do you think this money came from ?(BTW, unless you were a contract worker, you were legally required to be paid for that travel time)
It all about customer service and letting people know their full billing policy
I agree. That is why I do understand your complaint but be aware, your situation is not unusual. Your only real complaint is nobody told you you will be paying for all labor needed to complete your job (which does include the guys getting to your job) and you are not happy with that.
The thing is, driving to you location IS part of the expense of doing the job at your house. There is no escaping it. You do pay for that time in one way or another. This company is just dilling it directly rather than hidden in a "service call" charge, which as I stated earlier, in most of my work, would be more costly than a true hourly rate billing.
If you do not want to pay for the drive time, take your septic system into the shop yourself to get it repaired. Oh, you can't do that can you. Why do you think the workers are not due their pay for driving to your house. It costs the company money and it is time you did not have to expend.
As far as the waiting time, unless you had a guarantee of time, you have no claim there either. What you could have done is left after the agreed upn time and gone to work, thereby mitigating your losses. That way when the poop company should up and couldn;t do the work and tried to bill you for a service fee, you could argue that stating they missed the appointment. You didn't do this AND you allowed them to perform the job so you have to pay. Just pay the bill and be aware that you are now wiser to the ways of the world.
If you take these guys to court, you will lose much more (in not recoverable) money than the $200 bucks. Make an effort to get a correction and live with what you get. Just tell them you will not do business with them anymore because of the situation.