Was this a fair price for a gas line installation or did my mom just get ripped off?

[James7]

Hey guys, I want to tell you what happened to my mom and see what you think.
A few days ago she noticed a gas leak on her property, and it turned out she had to get a new gas line installed.

Now, my mom is an old lady in her 60s who knows nothing about this kind of stuff. She was also in a rush to get it fixed because she was afraid of being without heat and warm water. She didn't bother to call around getting quotes but just called the first plumber she could find.

These guys ending up charging her $5,000 to install the new gas line! That seems WAY too high to me, especially since it only took them a day and a half worth of work to complete. Is this normal?

 

[havasu]

First off, young man, is that a lady in her 60's is NOT OLD!

It is hard to evaluate whether she was ripped off on the gas line installation, but anyone who doesn't shop around is asking for trouble, in my honest opinion. With a few pics, a detailed description on what had to be done, the location, and whether he was licensed or not would help us to help you.

 

[James7]

Hey Havasu, thanks for your response.

I agree with you that not shopping around is asking for trouble. For most other home repair projects I'm sure she would have, but she was very desperate to get heat and hot water back. I probably should have taken a more active role in the whole thing. To make things even worse my mom told them almost right off the bat something like "I don't care how much it costs, I just want it done".

As for the gas line installation itself, I'm no expert either so I'm not able to describe this in technical detail, but what they did was run a line perhaps 100 feet from the gas meter around the back of the house into the water heater in the basement. They trenched it and the line itself was flexible and yellow. The entire project took them a day and a half with a few guys working. I just don't see where the $5,000 price is coming from. I can see maybe $2,000 but $5,000 seems insane to me.

 

[Chris]

For a licensed contractor to come out with a crew and install 100 LF or so and do connections, inspections and testing that seems to me to be on the high fair side. Without knowing exactly what was done it is very hard to say exactly what it would cost.

 

[chukar]

Price seems pretty close every guy that works it has a cost behind him, say I charge out at 90$ a hour that goes to pay for my office staff, all my licenses, permits, insurance, fuel, equipment etc when all is said and done the company may only make a small profit per hour on that job say 10-20$ per person working on it. You have three people doing an emergency gas line, means they have to be pulled from other jobs to get it done.

It's pretty close to what I would charge that would be 3 guys working the job bid it for 2 days plus materials, permit, misc expenses. Look at it this way you may have gotten cheaper prices but you also may have gotten more expensive prices as well.