Not Happy With Undisclosed Service-Pricing Of Invisible Fence Brand/ 12/1/2010 & No Follow-Through To Discuss It By Manager In Service Dept.

On my recent call to the Invisible Fence Brand service department people I ended up talking with manager Brandon here in Fairfax County/Annandale, northern Virginia and I explained how my wire was inadvertently cut by our neighbor repairing our border wooden fence. I told him where it was and what I thought had happened and arranged for someone to come check on the problem and solve it. At no point in this conversation or any of the previous two that I had ( there were a number of messages going back-and-forth for a week or so ) was the cost mentioned to us of a service call. Silly me, I should have asked up-front as when I heard the charge from serviceman Pete I immediately exclaimed : " That's highway robbery! "

Pete had come and looked inside and then gone outside to where I believed the damage had been done. He was out there ten minutes or so and perhaps ten minutes or so inside : and for these twenty minutes I was charged $142.60 which included him coming ( $85 ) and his time ( $45 ) and the cost to repair the fence ($12 ). That's " highway robbery " in my book.

What about the fact that this was our first call in seven years ? What about a discount for being a good, loyal customer? What about telling us up-front what to expect? It's the holiday season, too. Pete was nice and professional enough and my beef is not with him : it's with Invisible Fence that should know better than to hire managers that do not discuss up-front charges and possible costs.

Heck, for that kind of money I could have gone outside and fixed the problem myself with wire that I bought from Home Depot. Maybe that's what they should recommend in the future : that the customer fix it himself.

So, in summary I am not pleased with the results here as it has been several days and Pete knew I was quite upset and marked it on the bill and I have not received a call or an explanation from Brandon or anyone else at the Invisible Fence Brand people.

The fence has worked well and for the last seven years I have not had a beef with that at all. As a matter of fact I am very pleased with that, just not this recent series of calls back-and-forth and then being charged an exorbitant sum in my humble opinion for twenty minutes of work max to fix a really simple problem.

Find other ways to make extra money and keep loyal customers happy with all your service. For $142.60 you just bought yourselves a whole lot of bad will that was unnecessary and so easily fixed with a call ( on the spot - from Pete to manager Brandon ) and some concession to my complaint.

I probably should not post this but then again I am quite unhappy and this is my way of being heard by someone I hope. Being in the retail service business I am quite aware of customer service.

There should be some compromise on this type of pricing. My afterthought after hearing Pete tell me the pricing and then explaining it and saying that I should have been explained up-front before his call the pricing is : that I should have kept him for the full hour that I paid for , the extra forty minutes doing handy-work on the fence or other things as I had paid for forty more minutes and got nothing for it except the feeling of being royally ripped off.

I'm a nice guy and I do not like to complain : but this is how I felt and still feel - ripped-off. TONY