If we sue our HVAC contractor for charging us travel fees when we have a warranty on labor, will we win?
4
100Ṁ102
2027
71%
chance

We had a heat pump installed in our home a few years ago. It came with a warranty for parts and labor. Every time something has broken, the installation company provides the parts and labor while at our house for free, but charges us a $200 fee for travel. Here's all the contract says on the matter:

The most relevant line seems to be the one saying "this agreement does not cover [...] fuel costs [or] transportation". It's not clear whether being allowed to charge for transportation but not labor would include "wages we have to pay our employees to drive places", since that's both.

Additionally, if the warranty doesn't cover the travel fee, what's the maximum? Surely trying to charge us a million dollars would be illegal, as that would effectively be the same as refusing to do the work. So it obviously can't be the case that any travel fee is allowed, there must be some "reasonable" criterion. In our case they're charging us $120 an hour for the driving, which seems excessive.

I figured this would be a relatively common issue, but in some quick research I haven't found any precedent. In particular, the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal publishes all their decisions, but I don't see anything similar here.

This market resolves if/when the matter is escalated to any court or arbitration committee. A "win" includes any ruling that they have to not charge us for travel on a specific past or future instance, even if it doesn't require them to pay us back for all previous fees we've already paid, or doesn't apply to all future repairs. If the ruling is that we must pay some percentage of the original fee, this resolves to the inverse of that percentage. (Not including gas costs, since it's undisputed that we have to pay those.) If the original ruling is appealed in some way, this market resolves only to the result of that original ruling. If we threaten to escalate it and the company backs down without us having to do so, that doesn't count for this market. If we formally begin the process and then as part of the case the company decides to offer a settlement, that does resolve this market as though it were the ruling that were made. (Since it indicates they expect to lose.)

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