For Heating Or Air Conditioning Questions
If you have a heating, air conditioning, or water heating question, you can also post it in the 'alt.hvac' newsgroup. It's also a public newsgroup, and is open to anyone, including home owners. A lot of guys there are extremely knowledgeable and happy to help. There are also a few idiots, just like other newsgroups. If you find one to be offensive, simply put them in your 'Block Sender' list, and you won't have to read their posts again.
Answer:
The reason I said that was: I was one of the regulars there for years. Do a Google search in alt.hvac and my name and i go back to '96 (I think). I just got tired of the bickering and fighting. I'm not saying I didn't get into it either. It's just that it got bad. I think at one point 95% of the posts were ones just calling the others names. Then most of the rest were them telling hom owners to f*ck off. A lot of those original people are still around and fighting with each other to this day. Ones that used to be friends! (or so I thought). It's like RP said: If homeowners did their homework there would be such nastiness. 10 years of the same questions day in and day out: "Which one of these brands is better?" "My furnace died and I had to get a new one and the contractor charged me $XXX. Did I get ripped off??" "My furnace quit working. I have changed the thermostat 5 times and still doesn't work. Am I using the wrong thermostat?" "I hear a funny noise coming from my furnace. What is it?" "The widgit on my firnace is all burnt up. Where do I get a new one from?" I want a new air conditioner for my house. I live in Bumf*ck and my house is medium sized rancher. What can I expect to pay in my area?" "How often should I change my filter." Alright. I'll stop. You get the picture..If we didn't charge markup then we would have to charge a higher hourly rate. That is the bottom line, and seems that you've already answered that question. Since our profit margin depends upon markup (that's just the way it is commonly done), installing a customer supplied unit cuts into our profits, that is, unless we charge exactly the same as we would had we provided the unit, minus our cost for the unit of course. IOW, the homeowner would have been better off letting us sell them the unit. The added benefit is that for the same final cost we would warranty the system for 1 year, parts and labor. We can also typically get the systems at lower cost, thus the customer's total will actually be greater than it would had we supplied the system. I pulled the same thing on myself when I put in my own well system. I could have had it done professionally for what I paid for supplies alone. Lesson learned. If you would install a motor that some customer brought in for your standard hourly rate, then you're screwing yourself over. By the time you count overhead you've probably lost money on the deal, unless of course you're a shadetree mechanic with no overhead.