The Internet is good and bad. Good for exposure, but terrible when a customer goes online and sees similar items for less money and wants you to supply the materials at Internet prices.
Once that Genie is out of the bottle, it is impossible to put it back in. Like I have said before, we need to start embracing things we cannot change. I made changes many years ago when Sears was the only place a homeowner could buy a submersible pump. I would match the price of their “off brand” pump, with a “name brand” pump. Rarely did I miss a sale. I had published prices for a splice, wire, pipe, fittings, tanks, and all misc stuff. I was happy to cut some wire, make a splice, and load it into their car. You can make pretty good money this way and never have to start the pump truck.
I just had to start charging what it is really worth for labor. This was a while back, so my installation charge went from $100 to $500. It would probably be twice that now. I even got a kick out of selling all the equipment, when they tried to get another pump man to install it all for 100 bucks. You wouldn’t believe some of the mad calls I got from my competitors. When your competitors are mad, you know you are doing something right.
Sometimes the homeowner would get someone else to install it. Sometimes they managed to get it installed by their self. I had already warned them about dropping something and how much I charged for fishing, on top of my high priced installation.
Sometimes they would try, but couldn’t get the old pump pulled out. So they would call back and schedule a time for me to do the install, especially when they finally realized it was still the same price installed as from anyone else. Sometimes they would get half way through, realize the labor was really worth what I was asking, and call for me to finish, at the full labor price of course.
It makes it look like you are charging exorbitant prices for labor, and you should be. Anybody can buy a pump, but you have spent years learning the best way to install, and that is worth a lot. If they didn’t want to pay my labor rate, I didn’t miss the sale, and still made pretty good money to load it into their car.
Even the ones who got it installed on their own usually said they would never do that again. After they saw how much work was involved, it made my labor prices not look so bad after all.
The pump companies and the Internet have made it hard to make profit on the sale of pumps. So you need to charge for your expertise. Some will still be able to DIY, for which you still make a little money. But many will realize your price for a professional installation is worth every penny.