Suburban Propane review: Service: hooking up 2 fire bowls for pool

This process started over a year ago. We were building a pool in Florida and we were told by the pool company that we needed to find someone to dig and install the gas lines for our hybrid (electric and gas) pool heater and fire pots. The pool company, at the same time they were installing our pool equipment also put the sleeves to our fire bowls for the future gas line. We contracted Surburban out of Sarasota to do this work. When asking for the estimate I requested an estimate for running the lines and installing the bowls. We were given an estimate of around $3000 to do this. We called several other companies for estimates and the $3000 seemed in the general ballpark, we contracted with Suburban because they were already our gas supplier. On 10/24/2022 the trenches were dug and the gas lines run. the charge was $3670.10 which we paid without question. 2 men were there all day, the breakdown of the bill was $2530 for parts and $900 for labor.

Then after our pool was completed in July of 2023 and it was time to hook up the fire bowls the saga begins. We had numerous appointments with Suburban over the course of many months and still didn’t have our bowls hooked up because of different things that Suburban wanted the pool company to do, thes seemed reasonable requests and the pool company came out and made the changes. The final hookup involved connecting the gas,soap test for leaks and turning on bowls to make sure they are working. For this we were charged $974.74, $900 for less than 30 minutes of labor. They tried to also charge $63.77 sales tax on the labor? No parts involved. When I was emailed the bill I honestly thought someone had accidentally had added a zero. When I told them this was ridiculous for a job that took less than 30 minute all they would say is that’s what we charge. This charge equates to $1800 per hour, absolutely ridiculous. They reluctantly took off the sales tax. The tech was there less than 30 minutes! Again let me reiterate, my husband had mounted the fire bowls to the columns, all Suburban had to do was connect the flex hose to the burner, purge the line, test for leaks and make sure they ignite. $900, really! We feel really mislead and cheated. $900 for less than 1/2 hour of work! Also when I originally talked to Suburban about the job I was under the impression the job was to dig and run the lines and install the bowls. The total amount ended up to be almost $5,000.

I would be glad to fill in the information that I didn’t go into detail on in this email regarding why the multiple visits, which we also paid for. But I felt it was too much to try to put in this email.

Deborah Barnes. [protected]

[protected]@gmail.com