My Mother hired a licensed electrician to install 1 ethernet drop in her home office. She already had a preexisting tp-link setup in the basement. She showed me the invoice today which totaled $958.00! I’m shocked and disgusted. Feels like they took advantage of my Mother.
I told my Mother to call them first thing tomorrow morning to see if they possibly made a mistake. If not, I advised her to never do business with that company again. This seems like highway robbery. Is there anything else she can do?
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First red flag is Ethernet drop installed by a electrician.
When I bought my house 25 or so years ago, one of the first things I did was have Ethernet and cable drops installed to every appropriate room (5 rooms). Cost me $2000 and they left me with the leftover cable. I installed drops myself in the cellar. Now everything is on Wi-Fi and I’ve discontinued cable. Oh well.
You were overcharged.
The price for one drop could very easily have been half of what you paid. Most of the work is taking the job, getting to the site, understanding what needs to be done at this particular location and getting started. Once you’re there and working, adding a few more drops is comparatively little additional effort.
Well, there is a large hank of phone, Ethernet, and CCTV cable that goes from my cable splitter/punchdowns/Ethernet blocks across the cellar ceiling and up into a hole that goes straight up to my attic then drop down into the three second floor bedrooms and one into my first floor living room.
I ran three more sets across to the other side of the cellar - one out to the back porch, one up into the dining room, one to the cellar wall under the dining room.
So on total they ran four runs and setup the phone and Ethernet panels. I ran three runs.
Our commercial vendor charges 250 per run flat fee.
Looks cost seems excessively high for a simple Ethernet drop installation, and it might be worth seeking a detailed breakdown of the charges
Yeah way over paid. I run low voltage for a living. 1cat5-6 drop is $80 per line and $144/hr for labor, and even I think our prices are a little high but I am also poor so everything is expensive to me.
I did ethernet myself earlier this month. 2 60 foot cat6 runs, through a wall, down outside the house, then back up and in at the other end, cable running through the crawl space. It was about 40$ in material and took me and my father an hour with full termination on both ends and so far stable gigabit. Ethernet is not something that needs an electrician (no notable current) to install, although some of the same skills apply.
Overall, a single ~25 foot cat5e run? Based on information in the posts and comments, if you paid more than 100$ you got ripped off, and I would probably have done it for 75.
The problem is that there’s a minimum amount someone like that will charge to do a job. She probably would have paid the same amount if she’d had him put 4 drops in that room. He just wasn’t going to waste his time going out there without making a certain amount of money.
Before I even saw the price, I said 1k per run in my head. Learn how to pull cable yourself if you don’t like it. Shit can be challenging sometimes. You charge 1k per run because some runs should cost 2k and some should be 500. When you only want 1 run done, you pay the premium then. Having said that, probably should have adjusted this one after the fact and said “Hey that was a pretty easy one, here’s 30% back”.
Given what you have said, the high end this should have cost no more than $250.
Why is anyone installing anything less than CAT6 today??
Why is anyone even doing anything less than cat 7
Look on the bright side. It works! I’ve run into many many many electricians, licensed and not, who have no idea how data works. They’d splice stuff together all day long, leave twisted pairs exposed for like a foot and so on and so forth.
Anyone else wondering why someone’s mom has a server rack on the basement?
Only moms website hosting.
Av lead tech here and yeah that price is absurd. 250$ job max
I had a quote for $250 per outlet. I decided to do myself. Yes, your mom got screwed. Sorry, this happens often with older folks and disinformated people.
I knew a friend of a friend who used to do tons of Ethernet drops at a hospital, which he stopped doing and does office IT work nowadays. When I bought a house, I asked him for his rate per drop. I paid $1500 for 13 Ethernet drops, and he even brought/sold to me a $200 switch panel (likely barely used hospital gear that was being thrown out) for $50. He also installed and labeled all my drops.