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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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.
Rule #1: don’t hire an electrician for datacom work.
I typically tell people to expect $200-$250 per drop location. I usually specify location because running 1, 2, 4, 6, etc wires to the same location is the same amount of work. Obviously cost of materials increases a bit, but not by much unless they’re long runs.
Considering OP said there is drop ceiling in the basement, that makes this a TON easier. I would have quoted $250 for the single run, and offered to run two cables.
$500 van roll fee on top of some pricy work. Maybe that was the minimum
I did a job where I made a few drops from house to two barns (conduit done by someone else) to setup up cameras, an AP and a switch, I only put down $400 as labor. I guess I under valued my self.
Anyone here hiring for something like this? 🫢
I work as a network cable tech in the US. Perhaps I could give a breakdown of the cost of this installation. For my labor, it’s $85/hr for a site visit, then $85/hr billed in 15-minute increments. Standard plenum cable costs somewhere around 0.37 cents a foot. A low voltage ring for the drywall costs somewhere around $5, and a keystone jack costs about $13 (although this does vary with the brand). A single port white faceplate costs around $2. I’ve done similar installs to this in residential areas, and if it’s an older home, getting a cable from point A to point B can be pretty difficult and time-consuming. That being said: I still don’t think this sort of install should cost upwards of $900.
You are a bad son for not just doing it for your mom before she had to call someone in.
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.
Was the rack already setup and populated?
Yes.
I paid about $500 for a licensed technician to install an outlet for my bidet and two cable drops. Unfortunately, she got ripped off :(
So charge a range, according to time! This is a rip-off!
Yeah that’s an over charge. I think I paid someone $1,500 to wire my whole house with CAT6A shielded I think I have 20 drops, two per room give or take a few extras in places.
She should have never hired an electrician always hire the actual low voltage companies. Electricians HATE doing low voltage because it’s tedious compared to running romex and requires more specialized tools and considerations.
Did your mom hire a chain electrical contractor, like a Mr Sparky or similar? because they are notorious for charging ~$4-500 an hour or more and hiding it behind a flat rate pricing system.
sparkies have no business installing network cables
Every time I inherit a job from a sparkie I want to punch them in the nuts