My Mother hired a licensed electrician to install 1 ethernet drop in her home office. She already had a preexisting tp-link setup in the basement. She showed me the invoice today which totaled $958.00! I’m shocked and disgusted. Feels like they took advantage of my Mother.
I told my Mother to call them first thing tomorrow morning to see if they possibly made a mistake. If not, I advised her to never do business with that company again. This seems like highway robbery. Is there anything else she can do?
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I would never hire an electrician to do low voltage, I would find someone who specializes specifically with Ethernet wiring, like in Minnesota I used Correct Cabling.
The typical price for a business that had drop ceilings and drywall is $150-$300 depending on number of drops ordered. A single drop is barely worth the materials to deploy a tech.
Using that understanding doing it in a house will easily add $250 for the headaches that can happen. So knowing it is $300 and then a possible $250. $900 seems reasonable in the aspect of they have to make money and they have to make sure that sending the tech is worth doing. She got a quote that was the “I don’t want to take this job” price.
Think about it like this. If you were to tell me that you would pay me $50 to come make you a pot of coffee plus all of my travel and materials. That job to me is not worth it. However if you told me you would pay me $500 plus travel and materials. That job becomes worth doing.
Seriously? 900+ for an hour work?
Where? India?
Working for a uk university, a sparky would charge £200/hr for electrical work. For a data cabler, it would be about the same. If I was having hundreds of data points done, I would budget for £50 a cable.
I mean she signed off on the work right? I over quote jobs that wouldn’t be worth my time if I didn’t charge more. They never have to accept the quote
Would need to see the invoice.
You will pay $1000 any time someone shows up at your house to do anything.
Was it a fixed price quote or t&m estimate?
Residential is usually more expensive than business and usually companies won’t do residential if they’re big.
It’s been a few years since I got quotes, but generally it was $250 per run and those runs would be run to their max length with slack if needed. Or at least that’s what I requested 90 m for every run spool it up in the ceiling.
It can take a lot of work to run cable and residential because of things like fire blocks and other unforeseen circumstances.
But this seems very high to me.
Tip: if you ever pay someone to run ethernet and you need a single drop pay for two.
That’s crazy my price is $120/drop and that’s platedwall fished and tested
$120/drop no matter what? That doesn’t sound professional at all. Some jobs require cutting and patching drywall. Some jobs require a concrete core drill through commercial building walls/ceilings. Some jobs require hours of fishing through crawl spaces and attics.
You really going to spend 6+ hours and still charge “$120/drop” for 1 drop?
You cannot have much time in this or you likely have only ever worked on type of install. $120/drop is the price you charge for simple installs that have zero complication. Just wait until you see fire blocking, runs that go over really weird sections of building, etc.
Ask any veteran of this business and they will laugh you out of the room.
and that’s platedwall fished
I’m going to assume this means a wall plate and jack?
As opposed to the Verizon installer who just drilled a hole through my house, ran a wire from the ONT up to the 2nd floor, and put a large knot on the inside to keep it from falling back through… *sigh*
Didn’t even strap the cable or anything, it’s just out there flopping.
What does “platedwall” mean?
I asked above if the price included drywall work for the outlet box.
The only reason I can think it would be expensive is if it was a really complicated run. But seems way too much.
They said drop ceiling in basement and it was first floor. So basically drilling up through the floor into the wall in first floor. Super easy
“Super Easy” you never say that till you’re done with the job. You say or think that going in and you’re most likely fucked. “Oh this is gonna be super easy”. 8hrs later you wanna burn the building down and run around the town naked screaming at the top of your lungs. Congratulations you’ve just gone insane. Haha
Lol you sound just like my coworker!
run around the town naked screaming at the top of your lungs.
So YOU’RE the guy I saw the other day.
Best description/warning ever
That’s insanely overpriced. But I think the first mistake is getting an electrician instead of a low voltage tech.
I’ve always used an electrician, not sure how you hire a low voltage tech. Price was maybe 150 per drop ….so not too bad.
Everyone in this group says this, but I live in a small to medium city (metropolitan area population just over a million) and I could not find a “low voltage electrician” anywhere. Called tons of people. Closest I could find (who wasn’t just a normal electrician) was a computer repair guy who said “I suppose I could do some runs but I’m not a network guy” and a high end home theater shop that point blank told me it wasn’t worth their time unless I bought a multi thousand dollar home automation system from them.
So how exactly do I find a low voltage tech? Cause Google didn’t work. I suppose there must be a bunch of people who work the commercial side but it was near impossible to find anyone who did residential.
out lv techs here are twice what an electrician costs.
Any decent size IT services (or Managed Services Provider) can or has someone’s contact info on hand for this sort of thing. Security camera vendors also do it all the time, so they would likely be able to do it.
Don’t be surprised though if there’s a service call + $85-150/hr. for a single run. In OPs case, a MCOL area like the one we service should have been about 1/4-1/3 the total cost even for a professional low voltage shop.
Low voltage contractors are probably there, they are probably security or fire alarm guys who would be able to point you in the right direction most likely if they them self would not do it. The company I work for wouldnt have done a job like that unless it was a favor as we do large jobs but even if my boss was willing to do that for a premium price it wouldnt have been that much unless it was like a 2-3 hour drive each way.
Thanks, the structured cabling keyword search does have a lot more hits.
Low Voltage tech here, telephone, computer networking and fire/burg alarms. I find most my work on 3rd party platforms, Field Nation for example is one of the largest 1099 markets to pair providers looking for technicians. Just be sure to screen the resources your looking for, because Field Nation doesn’t really validate anyone’s claim to skillsets.
I had the exact same experience.
Found companies that advertised residential networking and they were like, “Yeah, we do it as part of a new build with full automation.”
Ended up having to do it myself.
I also just ended up doing it myself.
But if it was something I had to hire out, I almost definitely would have had to just hire a normal electrician.
Google “structured cabling”.
This.
I ended up teaching an electrician how to do the job right when they came to do some warranty work on a new home. I couldn’t believe what the guy didn’t know.
This right here. Might not be an overcharge for an electrician depending on the details of the cable run - but a low voltage guy would have done it for 1/3 of that. Opportunity dollars matter
This isn’t a ridiculous price. Might be slightly high but not highway robbery.
More than slightly imo. Of course we don’t know how long of a run this was. But for a single Ethernet drop by itself anything over 250-300 to start is price gouging in my book.
You can’t get a professional tradesperson to show up for the most basic job for $250 in much of the country anymore. That’s just the truck roll cost to come out and start the job.
They never really answered the question of how long the installer was there, or what the invoice stated. They could have easily spent 2+ hours getting to the location, understanding the job, pulling the cable, cleaning up, etc. It might have been $900 for one, $1500 for six - in which case nobody would bat an eye.
Damn, I went through 2x4s and walls to run cat6 from the basement and to upstairs. I saved myself a bundle!
Our commercial vendor charges 250 per run flat fee.
How long was the installer there for ?
$500 van roll fee on top of some pricy work. Maybe that was the minimum