We appreciate your review regarding the service call to your Jandy pool heater. You indicate that the cost of service was $550 but the signed invoice indicates you paid $150 plus HST. However, let’s investigate the facts.
You have a Jandy LJ250 pool heater that was manufactured between 2003 & 2009. The serial number of your unit is H05PK0912 which indicates your unit was manufactured in 2005. Your pool heater is 10 years or older.
As we specialize in the repair & maintenance of pool heaters & fireplaces, our technicians carry over 300 of the most common parts on their vehicle for pool heaters & fireplaces, are TSSA licensed, & are factory trained technicians. You are getting an expertise that most contractors cannot match. Also, we provide warranty services for two of the major pool heater manufacturers.
The $550 you reference is the approximate cost of the part that is required to fix your pool heater. This is an electronic circuit board which are expensive to replace when they fail. Our technicians carry this part on their vehicle as it is good for business to be able to accommodate our customers on the same day without multiple return calls. We were able to show you that this was the part required to fix your unit but you only wanted to pay the price you found on Amazon. Without our diagnostics, you would not know what would be required to repair your unit.
Gas Fix is a small local company & we cannot buy in the volume of a large internet company like Amazon to get the best price. What we offer is quick service & a reasonable price. If after we have done a diagnosis, a customer decided they wanted to buy the part on the internet, they will have to pay for the part, plus shipping & handling, possible exchange rates, & then another service call to have a technician to return to install the part. So the money you saved is now almost nothing & you have had to wait two or three days to get the part & the how many more days to get the technician back to install it. How much is getting your pool usable worth to you? So there is little real value in buying this type of product on the internet.
On a Friday afternoon of the weekend of a big party, customers do not want to hear that the part has to be ordered in & will come in on Tuesday, for example. They need the part now & that is what we, Gas Fix, work very hard to do for our customers. To do that, Gas Fix spends 10,000’s of dollars, per vehicle, to be sure we have the parts we need to fix most heaters on the spot & get the pool heater up & running right away.
Our markup is in a normal to low range as most businesses operate. On this part, the margin is 40%. When you see so many ads with discounts of 50% to 75% off you can be sure that their cost is even lower than the sale price. So those same companies have a margin of 75% to 80% well above our normal margins. In this circumstance, the list price (suggested retail price) for this part is $526.74. We don’t see how that is gouging the customer.
Purchases through Amazon have a 30 day return policy when it’s unopened & returned in it’s original packaging. We have a better policy. Our labour warranty is 30 days & our parts warranty is 90 days. That means if the part failed within 90 days due to a defect, there would be no charge to replace that part.
At Gas Fix, we strive to provide quality service & care to all our clients. Superior quality does come with a price; however, it is not possible to provide quality service at a discount price. ~ Gas Fix
