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Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

Philips Hue (and others, probably) have a feature where it'll randomly turn on and off lights in your house during set times, if you're into that kind of thing

I get alerts from nest using my hub home max or whatever, the one with the camera, which is neat. We were out of town recently and it went off and it was because they were testing the fire alarm system in our building

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Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

Bird in a Blender posted:

I get wanting to have fire coverage, and it's the only reason I still have my alarm. I personally don't consider that worth a lot though, I wouldn't pay it if it was costing me like $25/month or so.

Diva Cupcake posted:

The Napco/Honeywell system would have central station monitoring for both burglar and fire. That's $30/month. I'm leaning towards that update. I still have the Ring for floodlight and doorbell cams but it'll likely be independent.

Abode is $8.33/mo.

Everybody else seems to start at $20.

They all use one of the two or three same central station companies so......

Inner Light
Jan 2, 2020



Motronic posted:

Abode is $8.33/mo.

Everybody else seems to start at $20.

They all use one of the two or three same central station companies so......

Looking here, Abode looks to be 20 bucks / month, am I wrong? Dumb daily pricing so I multiplied .66 by 30.

https://goabode.com/plans

Going annual will bring it down to $16.67 / month for central station.

No one can be more pedantic than me!

Inner Light fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Apr 22, 2021

DaveSauce
Feb 15, 2004

Oh, how awkward.

Inner Light posted:

Looking here, Abode looks to be 20 bucks / month, am I wrong?

https://goabode.com/plans

$8.33/mo is the intro rate when you buy 1 year of monitoring with a hardware kit.

You can buy a year's subscription for $200, which is $16.67/mo.

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

Inner Light posted:

Looking here, Abode looks to be 20 bucks / month, am I wrong? Dumb daily pricing so I multiplied .66 by 30.

https://goabode.com/plans

Going annual will bring it down to $16.67 / month for central station.

No one can be more pedantic than me!



Sorry about that, I guess I am paying $16.whatever a month now (annually).

m0therfux0r
Oct 11, 2007

me.
So I'm moving into my first house at the beginning of July. There's extremely limited parking on the street- enough for my partner and I to park, but any guests would need to park a couple blocks away. It's not the end of the world, as most of our friends/potential guests are capable of walking that distance, but it'd really be nice to have more options. The property is surrounded by city-owned land to the north, which extends around the back of the house to the east. There's maybe 10-15 feet or so between the end of our property line in the back yard and a very accessible alley.

The seller used to be a realtor and is currently a lawyer. We asked him if he knew if it was possible to put a parking pad in the back and he said he believes so- apparently there was a state court case (Pennsylvania) within the past few years and the result was a ruling that states that you can basically just claim up to 1/4 acre of city/state land if it borders your property and isn't slated for some different kind of use or future project. The land is definitely not being used (it's basically "the woods" to the north and just some weeds to the east), so we think it might be possible.

Does anyone have any experience with something like this? Where does someone typically start calling to get permission for this kind of thing? Does the seller even know what he's talking about? I made a little crude diagram below- the blue is our soon-to-be property, the green is city land, and the gray is the road. The left shows the (roughly) the current property line and the right shows (also roughly) about the amount of land we'd be taking for the parking pad.



Note: This is in no way a deal-breaker if it turns out this isn't possible. It'd just be really nice to be able to do that.

DaveSauce
Feb 15, 2004

Oh, how awkward.

Motronic posted:

Sorry about that, I guess I am paying $16.whatever a month now (annually).

Still cheap IMO. The traditional security companies cost way more.

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

Your mileage may vary, but I got a pretty steep discount when I told my company to just cancel my service. I was paying like $35/mo and when I called they asked what it would take to keep me on. I told them $15/mo and they did it. This is with Brinks.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

m0therfux0r posted:

So I'm moving into my first house at the beginning of July. There's extremely limited parking on the street- enough for my partner and I to park, but any guests would need to park a couple blocks away. It's not the end of the world, as most of our friends/potential guests are capable of walking that distance, but it'd really be nice to have more options. The property is surrounded by city-owned land to the north, which extends around the back of the house to the east. There's maybe 10-15 feet or so between the end of our property line in the back yard and a very accessible alley.

The seller used to be a realtor and is currently a lawyer. We asked him if he knew if it was possible to put a parking pad in the back and he said he believes so- apparently there was a state court case (Pennsylvania) within the past few years and the result was a ruling that states that you can basically just claim up to 1/4 acre of city/state land if it borders your property and isn't slated for some different kind of use or future project. The land is definitely not being used (it's basically "the woods" to the north and just some weeds to the east), so we think it might be possible.

Does anyone have any experience with something like this? Where does someone typically start calling to get permission for this kind of thing? Does the seller even know what he's talking about? I made a little crude diagram below- the blue is our soon-to-be property, the green is city land, and the gray is the road. The left shows the (roughly) the current property line and the right shows (also roughly) about the amount of land we'd be taking for the parking pad.



Note: This is in no way a deal-breaker if it turns out this isn't possible. It'd just be really nice to be able to do that.
You need a real estate attorney duly licensed in your state to give you an opinion that they would be willing to defend in a court of law. Even if that is the state of law, that would likely not be a trivial undertaking to appropriate in some fashion governmental property and you will need an attorney for the process.

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

DaveSauce posted:

Still cheap IMO. The traditional security companies cost way more.

Yeah, even the competitors like Simplisafe are in the $25-30 range I think.

Abode has had their issues, but their support was great. Something was wrong with my "gateway" which cause some weird false alarms and they happily shipped a new one out immediately while still working with me to diagnose if it might be something else. And followed up after the new one was installed (which fixed everything and the system has now worked flawlessly for 2 years.......and it's been installed for 2.5 or so.....and I've not changed a single battery yet on the sensors, only charged the keypads and replaced the batteries in the (First Alert Zwave) smokes.

Not trying to be an advertisement, but I did my research before I bought this and I've not seen another system that looks much different from the standpoint of basic fire/burg monitoring. Of course they and others are trying to do other home automation stuff and cameras, but i don't care about that (I do that independently, but have Abode integrated into it) so I wouldn't really have a suggestion for anyone looking past just basic functionality.

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

m0therfux0r posted:

So I'm moving into my first house at the beginning of July. There's extremely limited parking on the street- enough for my partner and I to park, but any guests would need to park a couple blocks away. It's not the end of the world, as most of our friends/potential guests are capable of walking that distance, but it'd really be nice to have more options. The property is surrounded by city-owned land to the north, which extends around the back of the house to the east. There's maybe 10-15 feet or so between the end of our property line in the back yard and a very accessible alley.

The seller used to be a realtor and is currently a lawyer. We asked him if he knew if it was possible to put a parking pad in the back and he said he believes so- apparently there was a state court case (Pennsylvania) within the past few years and the result was a ruling that states that you can basically just claim up to 1/4 acre of city/state land if it borders your property and isn't slated for some different kind of use or future project. The land is definitely not being used (it's basically "the woods" to the north and just some weeds to the east), so we think it might be possible.

Does anyone have any experience with something like this? Where does someone typically start calling to get permission for this kind of thing? Does the seller even know what he's talking about? I made a little crude diagram below- the blue is our soon-to-be property, the green is city land, and the gray is the road. The left shows the (roughly) the current property line and the right shows (also roughly) about the amount of land we'd be taking for the parking pad.



Note: This is in no way a deal-breaker if it turns out this isn't possible. It'd just be really nice to be able to do that.

Sometimes if it's unbuildable and inaccessible you can just buy the land from the city.

My friend (we are in PA also) has a house on a cul-de-sac at the top of a bluff and beyond his back lawn it's all wooded and slopes down very steeply, and at the bottom of the slope there is a road. His lot does not extend to the road. He recently learned that it was part of this good-sized snaking parcel of mostly unusable no man's land (I think a couple acres in total) and that a bus yard nearby bought the whole parcel for like 10k so that they could expand their parking lot onto the tiny fraction of it that was actually flat. Now my friend plans to talk to the bus yard to see if they'd work with him to divide the parcel and sell him the part down the hill from his house. He's also looking to buy the unbuildable wooded lot that borders his property to the other side so he can build a sweet floating deck in the trees.

Wouldn't hurt to inquire about buying some of the land to add to your lot. If it's unbuildable/weird-shaped/inaccessible I don't see why your municipality wouldn't be amenable to unloading it in exchange for some cash (if it's the owner, that is).

In the meantime, is there anything stopping you from just going ahead and parking on it? Or would you need to make alterations to make it parkable?

PS: definitely consult a real estate attorney about how to go about buying the land from your municipality.

m0therfux0r
Oct 11, 2007

me.

Queen Victorian posted:

In the meantime, is there anything stopping you from just going ahead and parking on it? Or would you need to make alterations to make it parkable?

Just some high grass/weeds- I'm sure we could park there but it'd seem kind of like a "house with two cars on the front lawn"-esque. It's actually quite hard to tell where the property ends just from looking at it without a drawing of the lot.

It's also likely a main path for rainwater, so I'd be worried about a car starting to sink into the ground if it rained really hard. Obviously that may be an issue with a pad, but we'd likely use gravel and just keep filling it in if that happens. Doesn't need to be fancy. I can probably give a better evaluation once the house is actually ours- just trying to think ahead.

devicenull
May 30, 2007

Grimey Drawer

m0therfux0r posted:

So I'm moving into my first house at the beginning of July. There's extremely limited parking on the street- enough for my partner and I to park, but any guests would need to park a couple blocks away. It's not the end of the world, as most of our friends/potential guests are capable of walking that distance, but it'd really be nice to have more options. The property is surrounded by city-owned land to the north, which extends around the back of the house to the east. There's maybe 10-15 feet or so between the end of our property line in the back yard and a very accessible alley.

The seller used to be a realtor and is currently a lawyer. We asked him if he knew if it was possible to put a parking pad in the back and he said he believes so- apparently there was a state court case (Pennsylvania) within the past few years and the result was a ruling that states that you can basically just claim up to 1/4 acre of city/state land if it borders your property and isn't slated for some different kind of use or future project. The land is definitely not being used (it's basically "the woods" to the north and just some weeds to the east), so we think it might be possible.

Does anyone have any experience with something like this? Where does someone typically start calling to get permission for this kind of thing? Does the seller even know what he's talking about? I made a little crude diagram below- the blue is our soon-to-be property, the green is city land, and the gray is the road. The left shows the (roughly) the current property line and the right shows (also roughly) about the amount of land we'd be taking for the parking pad.



Note: This is in no way a deal-breaker if it turns out this isn't possible. It'd just be really nice to be able to do that.

Don't trust anything the seller told you. Contact your own lawyer if you actually want to do that. Don't try to DIY this - most towns are way happier to deal with a lawyer then someone trying to guess their way through this.


You could also consider something like this, which would allow parts of your lawn to be parked on with no issues (and would probably be way cheaper then trying to acquire town land)

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

If the seller could do this easily and cheaply, as one would assume based on their claimed experience, it would have already been done before the property was sold so they could bake that into the price. As a thing they could do at cost/labor only.

So what do you think it will cost you to hire someone to do this if it wasn't worth doing for them?

StormDrain
May 22, 2003

Thirteen Letter

Motronic posted:

If the seller could do this easily and cheaply, as one would assume based on their claimed experience, it would have already been done before the property was sold so they could bake that into the price. As a thing they could do at cost/labor only.

So what do you think it will cost you to hire someone to do this if it wasn't worth doing for them?

I don't see where anyone said it was cheap or easy? Different people value different things and I would think the drive thru parking was ugly.

m0therfux0r
Oct 11, 2007

me.
We explicitly asked out of curiosity- he didn't bring it up on his own. The seller and his wife have been extremely honest and accomodating- encouraging us to not skip inspection, paying for some stuff I thought was a longshot following inspection (which went super well- in this kind of seller's market they absolutely could have told us to gently caress off with the couple repairs we asked for and they agreed to all of them). Regardless, I do know that they are trying to sell their house so I take everything they say with a grain of salt and wouldn't proceed without verification from a third party.

I in no way plan on just going rogue and making a parking spot back there without making that it's 100% legal and verifying that with the city- I was mostly asking to see if anyone had any experience with anything like that and where to start first re: contacting a lawyer or some sort of city department to see if it's even possible. If it's not possible, that's fine- parking and no central air were literally the only two cons of this house- it's by far the nicest one we've looked at and we lucked out in getting it. (I know a lot of people in the house buying thread consider no central air as a deal-breaker, but in Pittsburgh we have a huge amount of houses built in the 1920s-30s and a good bit don't have central air- even the nicer ones.) Extremely excited to move in regardless of whether or not we eventually have a parking pad.

Maggie Fletcher
Jul 19, 2009
Getting brunch is more important to me than other peoples lives.
In the interest of actually having usable space in our spare bedroom (which is now serving as a guest bedroom-music studio-art studio-workout room-office), we pulled the trigger on a wallbed yesterday. The one we wanted was $7,500 for a full size! More than any other piece of furniture we bought, and most of what we bought we considered a splurge. We want to save space and make the place look nice, but that was a bit rich for a spare bed, so we went with a different model for $5,000. But the mattress is super plush and we're getting professional installation because imagine trying to DIY that poo poo--I'm handy but no way am I trusting myself with a wallbed installation. At least that room will be usable soon!

I am bummed that our spare mattress, which wasn't super expensive but is in absolutely perfect shape, is too fat for the wallbed. It's a few years old but is hardly used, and our guests always comment on how comfortable it is. I hate to let it go but the only other option is to let it sit there and take up space in the spare room. Hopefully we can give it away; it's too nice to go to landfill.

And I'm getting a quote for a closet door. The space is too large to buy something non-custom and have it installed, so we're going custom. I'm speaking with a sliding door company today, and hopefully the quote will be in budget. I organized the closet with stuff from Container Store and it's highly functional, but not having doors on it is really bugging me. This is something we're willing to wait on but it's stressing me out so I'm hoping we can get it done sooner than later.

This house is so small and we have so much stuff that organization is key, and the more time we spend not having it done, the more antsy I'm getting.

Edit: the closet door is going to run us $3,000. That's not terribly surprising but it's still more than what we wanted. The good news is lead time is 10-12 weeks so we won't have to pay it off immediately. Yippee!

And we still have to figure out our budget for lighting installation. The bedrooms are terribly gloomy on overcast or foggy days. Lamps only do so much. We did get sconces in the mistress bedroom (there is no master in our house, only mistresses), which look amazing, but still need some overhead lighting.

Maggie Fletcher fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Apr 23, 2021

MJP
Jun 17, 2007

Are you looking at me Senpai?

Grimey Drawer
I've got around 22 square feet of aluminum porch enclosure that I'd like to get cleaned, then sanded from 150 grit through to 400, then buffed. Is this the realm of a general contractor, painters, day laborers, etc.?

StormDrain
May 22, 2003

Thirteen Letter
Painter.

Last week I heard the sound of something structural breaking in my house, but my wife didn't hear it and I couldn't find anything. After my blood pressure dropped back to normal I realized it was probably squirrels fighting on my gutter which can make an awful racket.

Today I heard a similar sound while I was outside and found the source.

I left a gap on the end of my gutter guards because I didn't have enough material and it was beyond the tree area and was always clean anyway. A goddamn Squirrel was standing there. I'd say he looked scared but that's what they look like usually. A Squirrel running through and enclosed metal gutter with a gutter guard held on with tension alone will make an awful racket.

MiamiKid
Dec 14, 2003

Maggie Fletcher posted:

In the interest of actually having usable space in our spare bedroom (which is now serving as a guest bedroom-music studio-art studio-workout room-office), we pulled the trigger on a wallbed yesterday. The one we wanted was $7,500 for a full size! More than any other piece of furniture we bought, and most of what we bought we considered a splurge. We want to save space and make the place look nice, but that was a bit rich for a spare bed, so we went with a different model for $5,000. But the mattress is super plush and we're getting professional installation because imagine trying to DIY that poo poo--I'm handy but no way am I trusting myself with a wallbed installation. At least that room will be usable soon!



What brand/model did you end up going with? Interested to hear what you think after it's installed! I'm shopping for one as well.

Maggie Fletcher
Jul 19, 2009
Getting brunch is more important to me than other peoples lives.

MiamiKid posted:

What brand/model did you end up going with? Interested to hear what you think after it's installed! I'm shopping for one as well.

I'll post pics when it's installed, which could be soon, hopefully! We went with a local place called Wallbeds N More. They have some great stuff, but it's definitely pricey. This is what we got, in caramel finish:

https://wallbedsnmore.com/product/arlington-wallbed/

We also got one pier of shelving. We'd like two, but I don't think we have space for both.

Qwijib0
Apr 10, 2007

Who needs on-field skills when you can dance like this?

Fun Shoe
Yeah, Murphy beds are pricey. I ended up getting a hardware kit from rockler and building one. It wasn't too awful, so if you have access to a table saw and want a project, you can also go that route.

Democratic Pirate
Feb 17, 2010

Our latest project is finally getting all of our rooms furnished and walls decorated. I have newfound respect for interior designers and homeowners with good decorations, especially when they can make disparate pieces that all look great together.

Maggie Fletcher
Jul 19, 2009
Getting brunch is more important to me than other peoples lives.

Qwijib0 posted:

Yeah, Murphy beds are pricey. I ended up getting a hardware kit from rockler and building one. It wasn't too awful, so if you have access to a table saw and want a project, you can also go that route.

That sounds like a lot of fun, and I love building stuff, but I don't feel confident that my handiwork can support an actual person, nor keep from falling down. My handiness tends to end around carving spoons and hanging up poo poo.

If you wouldn't mind posting a photo, I'd love to see yours!

Qwijib0
Apr 10, 2007

Who needs on-field skills when you can dance like this?

Fun Shoe

Maggie Fletcher posted:

That sounds like a lot of fun, and I love building stuff, but I don't feel confident that my handiwork can support an actual person, nor keep from falling down. My handiness tends to end around carving spoons and hanging up poo poo.

If you wouldn't mind posting a photo, I'd love to see yours!





Maple plywood, 3 coats of wipe-on poly.

Maggie Fletcher
Jul 19, 2009
Getting brunch is more important to me than other peoples lives.
Nice! Yeah my confidence level is far below that, but it's a cool project! Looks like a true space-saver, too. Interesting that it doesn't interfere with the ceiling fan. The other house we looked at had one and it seemed so low that I thought the murphy bed wouldn't fit with it in it, but I guess I was wrong. I have a hard time judging the roominess of a space when it's empty, honestly.

I feel much better about fitting the wallbed into our guest room, looks like it's going to actually help a lot. Thanks!

Bi-la kaifa
Feb 4, 2011

Space maggots.

I just got a quote for getting our spare bedroom drywalled. Roughly $3000 (CND) for about 300sqft of wall. Seems like a lot, and yet also totally not unreasonable since anything to do with home improvement has gotten more expensive. No other contractor has held interest long enough to even quote it, so I guess demand is still very high.

Chad Sexington
May 26, 2005

I think he made a beautiful post and did a great job and he is good.
Anyone ever get a timeshare-esque sales experience from a contractor?

We've got a leaky roof in our back patio area. It looks like it was kind of a rinky-dink addition in the first place, so I wasn't totally surprised that it's showing its age after 10 years or so. Mostly I think there's just issues with the flashing around the skylights, which probably shouldn't be there in the first place. But whatever, my wife likes the space and it's been leaking water every time it rains and there are some spots that are pretty rotten.

So we've been getting quotes from roofers lately when a person from an exteriors contractor shows up at our door. I guess they were doing work down the street and a sales person was knocking on doors trying to drum up business. My wife mentions our leak and the guy says he'll send someone in a few days to check it out.

The guy comes and looks at the roof and talks to us for a while, maybe 30-40 minutes. He's calling his boss, getting ideas for what material costs would be. Whatever. I kept him focused on the spot we needed fixed because he kept trying to expand the scope to include the main roof on the house and the windows. At this point I was basically expecting him to leave and send us a quote like most other people we've worked with on this house have done.

Instead he says he'll be right back and goes to his car and comes back with a tablet and a bag full of materials. He then proceeds to give us what felt like an hour-long presentation about his company. All the Angie's list awards, certifications, licensing, warranty, transferability of warranty, etc. Then detailed descriptions of the materials and methodology they use which improve on the "Chuck with a truck" experience you get from other contractors. There was a whole powerpoint presentation and he had samples of all the materials he wanted us to handle. This could have been a 15-minute conversation. He just kept going.

Finally he writes down a quote and slides it across the table... $11,000. Straight away I'm like no way. He takes it back and says just for us, if we let them put up yard signs and canvas our neighborhood or whatever, they'll knock off some of the price. Slides paper back over and it's $8,800, but only if we agree to it today! That's a today price only! It's still more than double the quote we got from a roofer the previous week. I tell him thanks for the quote and we'll get back to them after the weekend. (AKA never.)

Nope! Fucker keeps going. He starts asking probing questions. Why can't you commit to it today? Don't you need it fixed? You said you didn't need to finance it, don't you have the money? How much money do you have? I had been polite up until this point, but finally I stood up and started herding him towards the door. "If you opt not to replace the skylights, it would only be $4,400!" Nope, bye. "You know, statistically, you're probably not going to get back to me after the weekend..." You are correct, now bye.

What the gently caress? I thought these companies had more work than they can handle? The last thing I was expecting was some douche with high pressure sales tactics that takes up a good chunk of my evening.

DNK
Sep 18, 2004

Bi-la kaifa posted:

I just got a quote for getting our spare bedroom drywalled. Roughly $3000 (CND) for about 300sqft of wall. Seems like a lot, and yet also totally not unreasonable since anything to do with home improvement has gotten more expensive. No other contractor has held interest long enough to even quote it, so I guess demand is still very high.

That job is $200 materials, $500 labor, and $2300 gently caress you

Queen Victorian
Feb 21, 2018

Chad Sexington posted:

What the gently caress? I thought these companies had more work than they can handle? The last thing I was expecting was some douche with high pressure sales tactics that takes up a good chunk of my evening.

Uh... $11k to fix some leaky skylights?

A month and a half ago we got three repairs done (roof leak, rotten soffit replacement, and downspout replacement) all for like $700 by a local roofing contractor who had zero online presence (found him by word of mouth). Totally no-nonsense, did exactly the repairs we requested (which were much simpler than we'd assumed, hence the low price), and never tried to upsell or bullshit us. Competent, down-to-earth "Chuck with a truck" contractors like this are worth their weight in gold.

I would not trust a contractor that has to deliver a lovely high pressure sales pitch that includes all sorts of upselling and scope creep and boasting about Internet awards, especially in the current climate.

DaveSauce
Feb 15, 2004

Oh, how awkward.

Chad Sexington posted:

Anyone ever get a timeshare-esque sales experience from a contractor?

Usually those conversations are prefaced with, "Well they don't make <thing> anymore so you can't just repair it!" and then quickly followed by, "you know we can do this for the price of your insurance deductible!"

They're looking for a sucker. Find a reputable local roofer to get that work done, these guys are just going to do poo poo work and never answer the phone when you need them to fix their work.

I'd put my money on them being some out-of-town storm chaser.

Democratic Pirate
Feb 17, 2010

Chad Sexington posted:

Anyone ever get a timeshare-esque sales experience from a contractor?

We've got a leaky roof in our back patio area. It looks like it was kind of a rinky-dink addition in the first place, so I wasn't totally surprised that it's showing its age after 10 years or so. Mostly I think there's just issues with the flashing around the skylights, which probably shouldn't be there in the first place. But whatever, my wife likes the space and it's been leaking water every time it rains and there are some spots that are pretty rotten.

So we've been getting quotes from roofers lately when a person from an exteriors contractor shows up at our door. I guess they were doing work down the street and a sales person was knocking on doors trying to drum up business. My wife mentions our leak and the guy says he'll send someone in a few days to check it out.

The guy comes and looks at the roof and talks to us for a while, maybe 30-40 minutes. He's calling his boss, getting ideas for what material costs would be. Whatever. I kept him focused on the spot we needed fixed because he kept trying to expand the scope to include the main roof on the house and the windows. At this point I was basically expecting him to leave and send us a quote like most other people we've worked with on this house have done.

Instead he says he'll be right back and goes to his car and comes back with a tablet and a bag full of materials. He then proceeds to give us what felt like an hour-long presentation about his company. All the Angie's list awards, certifications, licensing, warranty, transferability of warranty, etc. Then detailed descriptions of the materials and methodology they use which improve on the "Chuck with a truck" experience you get from other contractors. There was a whole powerpoint presentation and he had samples of all the materials he wanted us to handle. This could have been a 15-minute conversation. He just kept going.

Finally he writes down a quote and slides it across the table... $11,000. Straight away I'm like no way. He takes it back and says just for us, if we let them put up yard signs and canvas our neighborhood or whatever, they'll knock off some of the price. Slides paper back over and it's $8,800, but only if we agree to it today! That's a today price only! It's still more than double the quote we got from a roofer the previous week. I tell him thanks for the quote and we'll get back to them after the weekend. (AKA never.)

Nope! Fucker keeps going. He starts asking probing questions. Why can't you commit to it today? Don't you need it fixed? You said you didn't need to finance it, don't you have the money? How much money do you have? I had been polite up until this point, but finally I stood up and started herding him towards the door. "If you opt not to replace the skylights, it would only be $4,400!" Nope, bye. "You know, statistically, you're probably not going to get back to me after the weekend..." You are correct, now bye.

What the gently caress? I thought these companies had more work than they can handle? The last thing I was expecting was some douche with high pressure sales tactics that takes up a good chunk of my evening.

I doubt they were doing work down the street, that’s just a door to door guy. Generally best to not let them past the door, and to keep the door open for a short a time as possible because of all the reasons in your story.

H110Hawk
Dec 28, 2006

Chad Sexington posted:

Anyone ever get a timeshare-esque sales experience from a contractor?

So we've been getting quotes from roofers lately when a person from an exteriors contractor shows up at our door. I guess they were doing work down the street and a sales person was knocking on doors trying to drum up business. My wife mentions our leak and the guy says he'll send someone in a few days to check it out.

In my town I can call the police on this person and have them arrested for a misdemeanor. It's lovely. Ask your city council.

BaseballPCHiker
Jan 16, 2006

I had a similar experience with a company. We were getting quotes for new gutters. Most of the time a guy came out, took some measurements asked a few questions, and 15 minutes later we had a quote.

Then this fuckhead from Lindus construction comes, with a laptop to play us a movie, a full working diorama thing of the gutters with leaf guard and a little hose that would sprinkle water on the gutters and fake leafs, and like an hour sales pitch. We kept pushing him to hurry up as we had an appointment, and basically started putting on our coats and shoes telling him we were leaving for somewhere before he finally gave us a quote.

$25,000 for gutters on a 1500 sqft house...

Blocked his number, blocked his email, and never dealt with that company for anything again.

DaveSauce
Feb 15, 2004

Oh, how awkward.

Democratic Pirate posted:

I doubt they were doing work down the street, that’s just a door to door guy. Generally best to not let them past the door, and to keep the door open for a short a time as possible because of all the reasons in your story.

They probably were doing a job. We had been getting that a shitload the last few years. ~23 year old subdivision, so most of the original roofs in the neighborhood have been getting replaced. We were late to the game on our house, so we had to deal with these idiots every time someone was getting their roof done down the street.

These storm chasers follow the work. Once they're in a neighborhood, they canvas for more work. Again, surprised there wasn't some insurance pitch involved as well...

Finally got ours done by a local company, so shouldn't have to worry about that for a while.

dalstrs
Mar 11, 2004

At least this way my kill will have some use
Dinosaur Gum

Chad Sexington posted:

Anyone ever get a timeshare-esque sales experience from a contractor?


I just heard a commercial for an AC repair company using the exact same comparison. gently caress high pressure sales.

tomapot
Apr 7, 2005
Suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness.
Oven Wrangler
Had one or two like this over the years, biggest warning sign is when they ask if you have a certain amount of time to talk and if your spouse will be there to make decisions with you. Guy asked me to stand on the sample, think it was a window frame and glass, to show how strong it was. Worked his way through the whole script. Ugh.

poll plane variant
Jan 12, 2021

by sebmojo

dalstrs posted:

I just heard a commercial for an AC repair company using the exact same comparison. gently caress high pressure sales.

My landlord ran through two HVAC companies whose whole thing was slick branding and selling tiered "sealant packages" and pricing any actual maintenance out of a reasonable range. He finally found a guy word of mouth who did the job properly for 1/5 the previous quotes. I think pretty much anyone who is advertising at all is like this. Landlord is a sales guy and I maintain HVAC at work and we were just like shocked to see what these guys were trying to push.

Lawnie
Sep 6, 2006

That is my helmet
Give it back
you are a lion
It doesn't even fit
Grimey Drawer

H110Hawk posted:

In my town I can call the police on this person and have them arrested for a misdemeanor. It's lovely. Ask your city council.

Please do not call the police because someone who gets paid too little to do a terrible job annoyed you and wasted some of your time.

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tater_salad
Sep 15, 2007


I bought a house with a 60ish year old Delco Furnace that was Oil that converted to gas. 100% it needed to go before we moved in.
I think I talked to like 6ish companies to get quotes, some of which were good some of which sucked

memorable ones:

1. Sales pitch guy: 100% a salesman walked through the house, looked at equipment. punched poo poo into an iPad and SOLD to me. Oh you'll do this xyz, oh lets od this that and other stuff. Me: I dont want to do a minsplit in this room for now, it might be a future consideration but not now. Also was the highest price and baked their 72 month finance fees right into the cost there, they dropped by quite a bit when I said Financing was nice but I had the cash to pay upfront. Also called me like 100 times to see if I had picked a company yet, I told them specifically I was going to take about a week or so as I was getting multiple quotes.
2. Company who would not come in due to the pandemic starting, only take pictures and self measure.. Came in with decent price but also took several days to get back to me with a quote / discuss things they were out.
3. Company that came in but also wanted me to sub out my own electrician to put in the AC panel and the outlet for the power-vent water heater. I called like 4 electricians 1 got back to me and I was like gently caress this I'm not subbing out poo poo.
4. company I went with. Came in, salesguy was basically an installer/tech who transitioned to sales kuz his knees n back were too old for doing it. Their quote was reasonable, ( a wee bit higher than #3 lower than #1). Ended up with them, salesman came and helped teh installer haul the old hunk of poo poo out and then installer worked on installing. Generally they worked as 2 to a team but at the start of pandemic they were down to 1.

Anyone doing a full on rear end in a top hat sales pitch probably is getting commission to crank that price as high as possible.

tater_salad fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Apr 26, 2021

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