I had damage to my natural gas line in to my house. I understood that it would be an expensive repair bill, but the bill that I received was outrageous. The final bill arrived and the materials were charged at $68 and the equipment was charged at $119. No problem, that's the cost of materials and goods.

The part that is in dispute is this: I had two service-men at my house for 3-4 hours, it was more like 2-3 hours but I added in an hour of drive time to get to my house and back to their home base. The labor cost line item for 8 hours labor: $1, 684.37.

So apparently I must have had the CEO and CFO of Excel working on the line at my house. I'm not 100% sure but, $200+/hr is not the going rate for any service field.

Final bill almost $1900 for 4 pipe fittings and 6-8 hours labor, talk about extortion.