Up-Front Menu Pricing

Surprises can be fun on your Birthday or Christmas. But when it comes to important decisions that you need to make in caring for your home and those you love, surprises are rarely welcome.

We proudly offer standardized up-front pricing to eliminate any negative surprises from your service experience and put you in complete control. It is also the only way to be fair and equitable in our service to you and all of your neighbors that we serve.

First, a little history lesson. Years ago, most home service providers (heating, cooling, plumbing, electrical) charged an hourly rate for travel time and labor, plus a retail price for material. Customer-oriented service companies like Able Home Services have since converted to up-front pricing.

What was wrong with hourly pricing? Hourly pricing is inherently unfair and forces you to authorize work without knowing how much it will cost. An easy way to explain how it is unfair is as follows:

A novice service technician arrives at one home at the same time that an expert technician arrives at another. They face identical problems. At an hourly rate, the expert technician will identify and resolve the correct problem promptly; thus saving the customer time, money and future problems. The novice technician will take more of the customer's time, use more parts (at customer expense), and charge a whole lot more for the effort. This is not fair or ethical, but that's what happens under the hourly rate method.

In addition, the incentive for an hourly plumbing company is to have inefficient technicians, and lots of travel and parts pickup time, because that translates to longer hours and more revenue. Also, the customer gets surprised by a big bill at the end of the job with no control over it. Up-front pricing solves these problems and puts the burden of quality and efficient service squarely where it belongs, on the service provider.

Some of the benefits of Able's Up-Front pricing:

• You know and approve the exact price before the work begins.
• The cost for the stated work is fixed regardless of how long it takes.
• The technician will be more efficient and respectful of your time because "extra-hours" do not mean "extra-money."
• The company takes responsibility for having the proper tools, equipment and parts on the job site.
• Hourly rates are not comparable, because you can't know how long it will take one company versus another. Flat rate prices are.
• Each customer pays the same price for the same service regardless of the technician. This is also very comforting to anyone who feels they may be taken advantage of such as the elderly or people who are not experts at plumbing.

Just as you would not walk into a restaurant and expect to pay an hourly rate for the chef, waitress, dish-washers, etc. plus some retail price for the food products, people generally understand the necessity and benefits of up-front, all-inclusive pricing. Virtually every product and service we enjoy today is delivered at a flat rate price - service companies should deliver this same benefit to you.

We don't believe it's fair to charge by the hour or to give flimsy estimates, so we give you the exact total price in advance before any work is done. Instead of a guesstimate to get a foot in your door, we give you the exact total price in advance for your okay before any work is done. Our customers love it because they are in control, they get the benefit of real professional advice and on-site review, and they don't end up with a nasty surprise of charges that they didn't expect or approve of in advance.

It's all about fairness and trust. We want to earn your business over and over for many years to come; up-front pricing is an important part of our commitment to earn your trust.