SERVICE MASTER CO

They did adequate job it's expensive to get water sucked out of your rugs and your walls. One of their huge fans took my breaker and it wasn't working for like a day but I got charged for the day and I had to tell that for them to take it off the bill and they should have just kind of notice it was not working and just not putting it on my bill.

If your insurance company isn?t paying, you don?t want to deal with ServiceMaster of Lancaster County. We had an unusual situation where our water continued to come into our basement for 5 days (until we got a pump put into the gravel trench that the sewer pipe is laid in.) It was groundwater (thankfully not sewer water) but groundwater means the homeowners insurance came the first day and told us we were on our own. The insurance adjuster did tell us that we needed to get the carpet out in 48 hours to avoid mold. So, we called a couple of companies and ServiceMaster was the first to respond. They arrived on a Friday evening and worked steadily for several hours ? we are very thankful for the hard work these guys did the first night ? but the experience really went downhill quickly. That first night, I asked for a ballpark estimate before signing the box on the tablet computer? they said they really couldn?t say until the office opened on Monday and could give us an estimate, but around $500-$3000. On Monday, the Project Manager came, took some photos and measurements, and left. He didn?t leave us any information (their website says you get an information package? the local owner has apologized repeatedly about the poor communication we received). We expected an estimate for the job after that visit and when one didn?t arrive we followed up the next day via email. We got a response 2 days later that said ?at about $6000? with no details ? when we requested details we got no response. We got a little more information about the process when we insisted the crew that arrived at out house to rip out drywall have the project manager call us before they could begin ? but still no more details on costs except ?$6000 was as of a few days ago and ripping out drywall is expensive.? When we finally got the bill, it was indecipherable ? it didn?t have any line item costs. The total listed was $9800, but the email accompanying it said the owner had discounted the bill by $1000 since it was so excessive. If you find yourself in this kind of disaster, I recommend that you take notes about when crews arrive and what they do as it is happening. We insisted on a line item bill ? on which we found $840 of charges for work that had not been done. Those were removed once we pointed them out, and after several discussions the owner they increased the discount offered from $1000 to $1725. The owner said their prices were set by a company that is accepted by insurance companies as the standard rates ? so he couldn?t do more. He was aware that our damage was not covered by insurance. In the end, we?ll pay $7300 for the services that the owner says we accepted even though we couldn?t get any information about the process, what our options were, or costs to make our own decisions. He said, ?We assume when the customer wants service that they are willing to accept the charges.? Those charges include renting drying fans from ServiceMaster at a cost of $168/week each (hardware store rental is $88/week) and dehumidifiers at a cost of $707/week each (hardware store rental is $132/week). The owner said the bill did not include a charge for extracting water for every time they were here (we were charged for 2 removals, 3 or 4 were done) ? but the cost was $1100 or about $250/per hour for time they spent doing that work. OUCH! I told the owner that I did expect that the bill would be large, and that we did value their services ? but when I use reasonable rental rates and hourly rates for labor and add in ?service call fees? like a plumber or other professional might charge our bill should have been closer to $6000 rather than $7300.

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Very pleased with service and results.