A $163 Pen?

Have you ever paid for something and it was so over priced that you wanted to scream? But then you felt like you had no choice and it makes you want to cry. It's finally happened! Our toilet in our guest bathroom was clogged on Tuesday and we needed a plumber fast. Arjay has been flushing pacifiers and wipes and paper and God knows what else. Well, yesterday after about 15 minutes of work in the bathroom, the plumber brought out a pen. He seemed convinced that the pen was causing the blockage. Then he gave me a bill that says: $163.20 "for removing a ballpoint pen that was causing toilet stoppage." Those were his words. Therefore, we paid a $163.20 for a ballpoint pen. Cry...cry...cry.

If only it stopped there it would have been bad enough. Except hours later after trying to flush a number 2 down the toilet, and it took 4 tries to finally go down, we realize that the problem was not solved. So, here comes the plumber again this morning. And this time the price has doubled because he has to do more extensive work, like take off the commode and reset and blah blah. Here we go again...cry...cry.

Thank God Greg was home and he had a serious "talk" with the plumber about how unfair it was that they wanted to charge us again when obviously the work was unsuccessful. Finally, we were able to get them to subtract yesterday's price and only charge us the difference between today's cost and what we paid yesterday. Still we paid a whopping $171.50 because he had to take off the commode then he had to snake it...blah..blah...cry...cry. We can't even get mad. We are beyond mad. We just feel so "ripped off" that it's not even funny. Then all he found was more paper, wipes and poop. More crying...

Why do plumbers charge so much money? I mean how can they live with themselves for "ripping" people off? We've heard that plumbers can be expensive but gosh. I wish I knew a plumber. Dear reader, if you know a young man who's finishing High School and not sure about college and wants to do a trade, please suggest plumbing. At least then you'll know a plumber and hopefully he won't "rip" you off. Cry...cry...cry...