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There was a wild post on r/RealEstate yesterday. It's already been deleted.
There's obviously a good chance that it's a totally fake story. I'd basically assume that it is. I don't even really care if there's even a 0.1% chance that it's actually true; it doesn't really matter.
Part of the reason why people likely believe that it's fake is that it sounds like absolutely outrageous behavior by the contractor. Something that no one would put up with. Something that would shock the conscience if it actually happened and there was a recording of the interaction or something.
So what's weird is that this is the standard modus operandi in the medical industry. It's just the way things are done. Yes, if you have insurance, then instead of telling you to your face that they're charging a ridiculous made up number after the fact, they tell your insurance provider the same thing. But the basic fact pattern is absolutely the same.
I'm definitely not going to go all Kulak and say that since this routinized obscenity shocks the conscious, everyone needs to start going around murderin'. But it absolutely is a routinized obscenity that should shock the conscience. Perhaps my crazy pills are significantly less potent than his, but they appear to still be crazy pills.
Lawyers can debate the legalese of "consent to treat" forms and what they do and do not allow, but it simply cannot be plausible that we will have a functional medical industry when it is the one and only industry that is allowed to simply refuse to provide you a price prior to authorizing work and then go on to just make up whatever the hell inflated price they want after the fact.
That's entirely believable to me.
Dealing with reputable HVAC contractors in my area, quotes ranged from $13k-35k for the same job.
A drywall contractor my dad barely showed up while continuously demanding new progress payments. He kept claiming he was too broke to finish the job without getting paid, couldn't afford gas to get to the job, the job was in worse shape than expected, etc.
Construction / building works in general are one of the last industries where if you don’t personally know (and are friends with, and can afford to pay well in most cases) somebody competent to oversee building works, you’re pretty fucked.
Seconding this- construction has lots of A) crooks and B) drug addicts. You can find honest people who do good work, but as a complete layman you don't really have a way to do so.
Seems ripe for disruption by a large conglomerate which lets tradespeople syndicate with them and verifies they are not A) Crooks or B) Drug addicts. It gives them a certificate of approval and then they can use that to prove to prospective clients they are decent and thus get more work, no different to how any certification regime (that's not been captured) works at the moment.
The disruption is always going to take the form of standardization of items into interoperable and easily swappable units. Custom work, that requires some degree of skill, will always be beyond the ability of large corporations to do all that well/efficiently.
The disruption in HVAC, for example, is going to be the decline of expensive and complicated central AC in favor of cheap and replaceable wall mounted mini-split units that can be installed by a clever homeowner or a cheap handyman. When part of the unit breaks, you replace it with another plug-and-play unit. Central AC requires skill in working with high amperage wiring, running ductwork, installing large and complicated and expensive equipment, and balancing the system across multiple rooms. Mini splits can run on regular 12-2 wire, each room has its own unit and its own thermostat so you don't have to balance or run duct, and each distinct element is relatively cheap and so can be replaced rather than repaired by a specialist.
The more you can turn the process into black boxes that an owner replaces in their entirety, rather than requiring skill, you can remove the need for skilled intermediaries and produce profit for larger corporations that can produce black boxes at scale.
Sure, I agree with that. I'm actually surprised by how many american homes have a central HVAC, the rest of the world already uses wall mounted mini split units everywhere (another benefit is that that you can cool down only certain portions of the house rather than running a massive power guzzler all the time). Plus you can upgrade your system incrementally rather than needing to do a building wide scale change if it turns out that you're not getting enough cooling in a certain part of the structure.
I blame the usual American largesse.
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