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Business Profile

Home Theater Systems

Sound by Design, Inc

Complaints

Customer Complaints Summary

  • 1 complaint in the last 3 years.
  • 0 complaints closed in the last 12 months.

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  • Initial Complaint

    Date:12/29/2023

    Type:Billing Issues
    Status:
    AnsweredMore info

    Complaint statuses

    Resolved:
    The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.
    Unresolved:
    The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.
    Answered:
    The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.
    Unanswered:
    The business failed to respond to the dispute.
    Unpursuable:
    BBB is unable to locate the business.
    On November 06, 2023, ***** ********* from Sound By Design sent me an email with a PDF of a proposal for a project that Sound By Design was going to do at my house on November 20th. In the proposal, it estimated that the job would take 3.6 hours to complete and the total cost would be $584.

    I paid $292 as a deposit so that they could do the job and once the job is complete they would send me the final invoice. In the proposal, it said if the job required extra parts, or if it took longer than expected, then the final amount would be more.

    As luck would have it, the job only took 1 hour and 10 minutes to complete and there weren't any additional parts needed to complete the job. To my surprise several weeks later I got my final invoice and the amount due was the same. $584. I was confused. Why am I paying the full price when the hours of labor were less (an hour and ten minutes, not 3.6 hours)?

    When I brought up my concern to *****, he said they charged me double since they sent two technicians to do the job. That was never stated in the proposal (they would charge double for two technicians). In addition, he said the charge per hour for labor was $132. That was never included in the proposal either.

    I objected to this and told him that I wasn’t going to pay him full price for a job that took an hour to complete just because you quoted 3.6 hours. That doesn’t make sense to me. In addition, I told him that wasn't fair that you're charging me double since you sent two technicians when that was never explained to me in the first place.

    In conclusion, ***** from Sound By Design was very misleading, and his sales practice was unethical and just down right wrong.

    Business Response

    Date: 01/10/2024

    I was able to reach out to Mr. ******* and have a really good discussion.  He explained to me that the (Hrs. qty) on our proposal was confusing because our team of technicians completed the job in less than the time shown it should take.  Our proposal presented to him stated that the job would take 3hrs to perform and our technicians completed the job in less than 1.5 hrs.  I tried to explain that the hours shown on the proposal were 3 "man hours" and not "clock hours".  His installation required that we send two technicians to safely install the size TV(75") that he owned.  I attempted to explain that the hours were being used at a rate of an hour per technician but he stated that that was not made clear to him up front.  We simply want to do a good and safe installation for all of our clients.  We will continue to serve Amarillo in the best possible way and if we need to do a little bit more clarification we will.  We ended the conversation in a very good and positive manner, we are not receiving that total agreed amount but I feel the dollar amount is not worth the dissatisfaction of a customer and future public communication.

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