So, I just received an email from a homeowner asking me to itemize my materials and labor. He stated that my price was higher than the estimate I gave him on site. ( I told him $1,500 to $2,000 after looking at it and taking my measurements) He also expressed concern about my warranty being one year. The following is the email I replied back with. I would like some feedback from some more seasoned business owners on how I should respond in the future or if you have any experience or tips you would want to share.
From: Joseph Hinton
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2014 9:57 PM
To: ******XX
Subject: Re: Chimney flashing repair
Mr. ***XX
I apologize for the price difference in what I told you. Most of the chimney repairs we do are one story and I incorrectly referenced those numbers when we were talking.
We do not itemize our labor and materials to customers for multiple reasons, two of which are:
(1) Our procedures, prices and materials are proprietary information. Most of our flashing is made in our shop with the rest made on site to fit the exact dimensions of your chimney. Because we only use premium products, we spend a lot of time researching, sourcing and manufacturing the materials we use. What we charge for that is not something I would want my competitors to know.
(2) I personally write each proposal my company sends out. I sometimes do 3-4 a night. To speed this process up, I have developed a spreadsheet to calculate material and labor together per linear foot or per square foot depending on the repair. When I enter the numbers, the spreadsheet gives me a total cost. It would be time prohibitive for me to re-calculate all of these numbers for each job. It not only saves me time, but it saves my customers money because I am not including extra time spent itemizing each job.
To give you a little bit more insight on how I arrived at that number, we only use premium products. On your repair we will have over $200.00 just in fasteners and sealant. The underlayment we put underneath your flashing is over $100.00 a roll. We will have over 5 man hours worth of labor (mostly shop time) just in the manufacture of the flashing. The vapor barrier is over $200.00 a roll. The cricket located behind your chimney is small and on a steep slope. This alone increases my labor time by a many hours, let alone the additional materials. We will have to completely remove all of the shingles on the cricket and the surrounding roof area, to ensure it is flashed and fastened properly. This is actually a rather large repair and maybe bigger than what you were expecting. The new shingles alone will cost a few hundred dollars.
We are very good at what we do and we stay as competitive as possible, but just like any professional business, it costs us a lot of money to perform our jobs to the best of our ability. When we start to tear off your shingles and siding; to get to the bad flashing, we will literally have thousands of dollars worth of tools and materials on site for any possible "What if" scenarios. I will also have guys that have done this exact type of repair over and over. We know what needs to be done and how to do it better and faster than any other company in the wiregrass. My company completed 6 chimney flashing repair jobs last month with an average cost of $2,672.33. each and we have two more scheduled ahead of the available dates I gave you and they are within a few hundred dollars of the amount I gave you.
The one year warranty is just standard verbiage used on our proposals for repair jobs.This does not mean that the repairs will fail after one year, and in fact if the repairs are not installed correctly, you most likely find out after a few weeks or months due to leaks. You can expect galvanized flashing to last 20-40 years depending on the environment and the amount of exposure to the elements. I would suspect that your flashing would be on the high side of that and close to the 40 year mark. We do offer lifetime flashing made from 16oz copper, but it is generally cost prohibitive for most shingled roofs and we mostly use it on concrete tile roofs or slate. Generally we only warranty repairs for one year based on the fact that it is a repair and we did not install the entire roofing system. Therefore, we do not want to be held responsible for possible failures caused by materials we did not install. While you may clearly know that a vent boot leaking on the opposite side of the house from where we worked; would not be caused by anything we did. We have in the past encountered customers who did not understand this or who wanted to attempt to extort my company to fix every repair that arrised simply because we had once worked on the roof. For those reasons we now state one year on our proposals. I would be willing to give you something in writing that said we will warranty our flashing, as installed by us, for the life of the current roof. The only exclusion being that any work done on the flashing by someone other than Pinnacle Property Care would void that warranty.
I apologize for this being so long, I did not intend for that when I started. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me again or call me. I would be happy to give you some references of our past work or you can read our reviews on Homeadvisor and angies list.
Thank You,
Joseph Hinton
From: Joseph Hinton
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2014 9:57 PM
To: ******XX
Subject: Re: Chimney flashing repair
Mr. ***XX
I apologize for the price difference in what I told you. Most of the chimney repairs we do are one story and I incorrectly referenced those numbers when we were talking.
We do not itemize our labor and materials to customers for multiple reasons, two of which are:
(1) Our procedures, prices and materials are proprietary information. Most of our flashing is made in our shop with the rest made on site to fit the exact dimensions of your chimney. Because we only use premium products, we spend a lot of time researching, sourcing and manufacturing the materials we use. What we charge for that is not something I would want my competitors to know.
(2) I personally write each proposal my company sends out. I sometimes do 3-4 a night. To speed this process up, I have developed a spreadsheet to calculate material and labor together per linear foot or per square foot depending on the repair. When I enter the numbers, the spreadsheet gives me a total cost. It would be time prohibitive for me to re-calculate all of these numbers for each job. It not only saves me time, but it saves my customers money because I am not including extra time spent itemizing each job.
To give you a little bit more insight on how I arrived at that number, we only use premium products. On your repair we will have over $200.00 just in fasteners and sealant. The underlayment we put underneath your flashing is over $100.00 a roll. We will have over 5 man hours worth of labor (mostly shop time) just in the manufacture of the flashing. The vapor barrier is over $200.00 a roll. The cricket located behind your chimney is small and on a steep slope. This alone increases my labor time by a many hours, let alone the additional materials. We will have to completely remove all of the shingles on the cricket and the surrounding roof area, to ensure it is flashed and fastened properly. This is actually a rather large repair and maybe bigger than what you were expecting. The new shingles alone will cost a few hundred dollars.
We are very good at what we do and we stay as competitive as possible, but just like any professional business, it costs us a lot of money to perform our jobs to the best of our ability. When we start to tear off your shingles and siding; to get to the bad flashing, we will literally have thousands of dollars worth of tools and materials on site for any possible "What if" scenarios. I will also have guys that have done this exact type of repair over and over. We know what needs to be done and how to do it better and faster than any other company in the wiregrass. My company completed 6 chimney flashing repair jobs last month with an average cost of $2,672.33. each and we have two more scheduled ahead of the available dates I gave you and they are within a few hundred dollars of the amount I gave you.
The one year warranty is just standard verbiage used on our proposals for repair jobs.This does not mean that the repairs will fail after one year, and in fact if the repairs are not installed correctly, you most likely find out after a few weeks or months due to leaks. You can expect galvanized flashing to last 20-40 years depending on the environment and the amount of exposure to the elements. I would suspect that your flashing would be on the high side of that and close to the 40 year mark. We do offer lifetime flashing made from 16oz copper, but it is generally cost prohibitive for most shingled roofs and we mostly use it on concrete tile roofs or slate. Generally we only warranty repairs for one year based on the fact that it is a repair and we did not install the entire roofing system. Therefore, we do not want to be held responsible for possible failures caused by materials we did not install. While you may clearly know that a vent boot leaking on the opposite side of the house from where we worked; would not be caused by anything we did. We have in the past encountered customers who did not understand this or who wanted to attempt to extort my company to fix every repair that arrised simply because we had once worked on the roof. For those reasons we now state one year on our proposals. I would be willing to give you something in writing that said we will warranty our flashing, as installed by us, for the life of the current roof. The only exclusion being that any work done on the flashing by someone other than Pinnacle Property Care would void that warranty.
I apologize for this being so long, I did not intend for that when I started. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me again or call me. I would be happy to give you some references of our past work or you can read our reviews on Homeadvisor and angies list.
Thank You,
Joseph Hinton