Five plumbers, one clogged toilet, five kinds of number.
One request produced a dispatch fee, two flat prices, a two-tier quote and a refusal. No average, and the numbers run from $65 to $650.
One homeowner in Atlanta, one clogged toilet, and thirteen plumbers phoned over three days. Eight of them said they could come. Five said something about money, and the five somethings were not five prices. They were a dispatch fee, two flat rates, a two-tier quote that depends on what the plumber finds, and one offer to come and look for free.
- 19
- plumbers found
- 13
- calls placedacross 3 days
- 8
- could comeof the 13
- 4
- named a numberthree kinds of number
How to read this
Two phrases carry the piece, so they are defined before the numbers.
- Confirmed they could come: the plumber said so on the call. That is stricter than answering, and much stricter than picking up.
- Named a number: the plumber put a figure on the repair. An offer to visit and estimate does not count, and neither does a fee for turning up.
The method is one job, one ZIP code and one frozen search phrase: ZIP 30310 (Atlanta), phrase plumber toilet clog clearing. Nineteen plumbers were found and thirteen were dialled, in three batches over three days.
The thirteen calls, one by one
Each plumber gets a code, P1 to P13, because no business is named here. The price column carries whatever the plumber actually said, which is why one row reads as a sentence rather than a number.
| # | Provider | What happened | Length | Confirmed | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 | Never picked up | 0:03 | No | None |
| 2 | P2 | A person answered: emergencies only right now | 0:21 | No | None |
| 3 | P3 | A voicemail greeting | 0:08 | No | None |
| 4 | P4 | Free estimates, and they could come today | 0:51 | Yes | free estimates |
| 5 | P5 | A $65 dispatch fee, possibly today | 1:44 | Yes | $65 |
| 6 | P6 | Price set by the technician on site, today | 1:19 | Yes | None |
| 7 | P7 | A voicemail greeting | 0:16 | No | None |
| 8 | P8 | $225, today between 3 and 5 | 2:04 | Yes | $225 |
| 9 | P9 | Price after an in-person assessment, Thursday | 1:27 | Yes | None |
| 10 | P10 | The line dropped as the agent introduced itself | 0:13 | No | None |
| 11 | P11 | Price from the service department before work starts | 2:49 | Yes | None |
| 12 | P12 | $95, today between 1 and 3 | 2:00 | Yes | $95 |
| 13 | P13 | $400 for the toilet, $650 or more with the drain line | 1:16 | Yes | $400 / $650+ |
The funnel
Every row is the sum of rows in the table above, and the “Calls” column says which, so nothing here is an orphan number.
| Step | Calls | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbers found | n/a | 19 | n/a |
| Called | 1 to 13 | 13 | 100% |
| Connected by the carrier | 2 to 13 | 12 | 92% |
| Reached a person | 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 | 9 | 69% |
| Confirmed they could come | 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 | 8 | 62% |
| Quoted something | 4, 5, 8, 12, 13 | 5 | 38% |
| Named a number | 5, 8, 12, 13 | 4 | 31% |
The last two rows are the ones worth staring at. Five plumbers said something about money and only four said a figure, and the fifth of those five is the difference between a quote and a fee for arriving.
The five answers
This is the part a single headline number would destroy. Five plumbers put something in the price field, and only some of them were answering the question a homeowner asked.
| Call | What they said | What kind of number it is |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | free estimates | Not a price. An invitation to a visit. |
| 5 | $65 | A dispatch fee: the cost of showing up, not of clearing the toilet. |
| 8 | $225 | Flat, with a slot today between 3 and 5. |
| 12 | $95 | Flat, with a slot today between 1 and 3. |
| 13 | $400, or $650 or more | Two tiers, conditional on whether the drain line is involved. |
Read down the middle column and the numbers look like a spread from $65 to $650. Read the right column and they stop being comparable at all: a fee for arriving, two flat prices for the same job, and a range that depends on a diagnosis nobody has done yet. There is no average in that set, and this post is not going to invent one.
“Would cost around four hundred dollars. If it’s only the toilet. Around six fifty, or more. With the drain line and I can do today.”
That is the whole of call 13, and it is the clearest reason a single number would mislead. The same plumber moved the figure by $250 or more in the space of one breath, and was honest about why: it depends what they find.
The arithmetic
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Plumbers found | 19 |
| Calls placed | 13 |
| Connected | 12 |
| Talk time, all thirteen rows | 14:31 |
| Talk time that was billed | 14:28 |
| Charged | $4.34 |
| Average per call placed | $0.33 |
The Length column in the first table adds up to 14 minutes 31 seconds. Three of those seconds belong to call 1, which never connected, and a call nobody answered is not billed. That leaves 14 minutes 28 seconds, which at thirty cents a minute is $4.34 exactly, and the average divides that across the thirteen calls placed.
What we would change next time
- Ask two questions, not one.“What does the repair cost” and “what does a visit cost” are different, and one call answered the second while sounding like the first.
- Label a fee as a fee in the result. A homeowner should never be able to read $65 as the price of fixing a toilet.
- Dial the unanswered numbers again in office hours. Two of the three calls that reached nobody were in the first batch, sent at 9:51 on a Monday night.
- Keep the description as tight as it was here. The two flat quotes came from the two plumbers who understood the job from the description alone.
Why publish the kinds of number
A homeowner with three quotes in hand thinks they are comparing three prices. Often they are comparing a fee, a flat rate and a guess, and the label is the part that decides which one to call. Publishing only the numbers would be the easiest thing to do and the least useful.