Why every scam thread is posted too late
Search any home forum for “was I scammed” and notice the tense: was. The $1,018 lockout, the $4,800 water heater, the $29,000 water mitigation invoice — all posted after payment, asking a question that only helped before. Price anchors matter most at 2am, when you’re wet, locked out, or cold, and the person in front of you knows it. This page is the number to have in your head before you say yes.
The full table of ranges is above. What follows is how to use them.
The four real quotes, debunked with the table
The $1,018 lockout. Honest range: $50–$175 for the lockout, plus at most $150–$250 after-hours. Even a full lock replacement with new keys tops out around $550. A four-figure lockout means you met the bait-and-switch model: quoted cheap by a call center, drilled your lock “because it couldn’t be picked” (almost everything can be picked), charged for lock, labor, and emergency. Report it — this exact pattern is what state AG consumer complaints exist for.
The $4,800 water heater. Honest range: $700–$2,500 installed for a standard 40–50 gallon tank. $4,800 is real money for a hybrid heat-pump unit ($2,000–$5,500) — so the question isn’t “is this number possible” but “did I order the thing this number buys.” If the quote says standard gas tank and $4,800, get a second quote. If it says hybrid, it’s plausible.
The $25,000 gutters. Whole-house gutter replacement typically runs $2,320–$4,222. Take the most expensive material Fixr prices — copper, at $18–$32 per installed foot — put it on a large 200-foot home, add old-gutter removal, and you still can’t spend much past $6,800. There is no honest configuration of this job that reaches $25,000.
The $29,000 water mitigation. The one that can be legitimate — and usually isn’t. Typical mitigation runs $1,200–$5,000. Class 4 losses (deep saturation into hardwood, plaster, foundation) genuinely run $20,000–$100,000. The tell is documentation: a Class 4 invoice comes with moisture maps, category classification, and equipment logs your insurer’s adjuster will verify. A $29,000 invoice for a burst supply line dried in three days is padding, and adjusters bounce them routinely.
Pest and wildlife: the widest gap on the page
This is the category with the most extreme real numbers, because almost nobody carries a price anchor for it. Three quotes people have actually been handed, against the table:
$20,000 for rodents in the walls. Fixr puts rat extermination at $500–$750 for a medium infestation, and $500–$650 specifically for rats in walls. Sealing the entry points — the part that actually ends it — adds $175–$500. A five-figure rodent number isn’t pricing extermination; it’s folding attic decontamination, insulation replacement and a multi-year contract into one figure with no line items. Ask for it broken out and a four-figure version usually appears.
“$13,000 and the rats are back.” The most instructive complaint in the category, because it names the real failure rather than the price. Money spent on killing instead of on exclusion buys a quiet month. Any rodent quote past about $1,000 that doesn’t itemize the exclusion work — where the holes are, what they get sealed with, who comes back if a new one opens — is selling you that same month again.
$3,200 for squirrels. Attic squirrel removal runs $275–$600, and a one-way exclusion door costs roughly what trapping does, $200–$600. Repairing what they chewed adds $150–$1,500 depending on what they reached. So $3,200 is defensible if it covers removal, exclusion and real repair, itemized — and isn’t if it covers three visits and a trap.
Termites are the ones to be slowest about. Treatment runs $450–$2,000 nationally, typically around $680 for a liquid perimeter treatment on an average home, and up past $7,000 only for heat-treating a whole house. The pressure here doesn’t come from the ceiling of that range, it comes from the floor: a cheap inspection ($150–$350) that discovers something needing same-day tenting. Termites eat wood at a speed measured in years. And before you price any of it, the three-feature check that separates termite swarmers from flying ants decides whether you are buying a structural treatment or a $250 nuisance call. There is no termite emergency that can’t survive a second opinion.
Honeybees hinge on which situation you have, not on haggling. A beekeeper collects a swarm hanging in the open for $50 to $100, frequently free; cutting an established colony out of a wall runs $800 to $1,500, because the comb and honey come out with it. Same insect, and the swarm-versus-colony call is the entire price — so a four-figure quote for a cluster on a branch is aimed at your not knowing the difference.
The 2am protocol
- Make it safe, then slow down. Water off, breaker off, tarp down. Once the emergency is contained, almost nothing needs fixing before morning — and the quote that “expires tonight” is telling you it can’t survive daylight.
- Ask for itemization on the phone. Trip fee, hourly rate, after-hours surcharge, parts. Honest companies rattle these off; scam dispatch centers say “the tech will assess on-site.”
- Know the multiplier. After-hours premiums run 1.5–3x. Take the calm-daylight range from the table, apply 2x, and you have your ceiling.
- Never pay cash-only, and never pay before work. Card payments can be disputed, on a 60-day clock that starts with the statement; cash in a van cannot.
- For anything four-figure: demand evidence. Camera footage for sewer lines, moisture readings for mitigation, the failed part for furnace/AC — and for a whole-system replacement, a second opinion before you sign. “You can’t see it, but trust me” costs you exactly the difference between the ranges above and the invoice.
When the high number is honest
Ranges have right-hand ends for reasons. Underground burst pipes ($600–$5,000), panel upgrades on old houses, compressor failures, trees leaning on structures — these live legitimately at the top. The difference between honest-expensive and scam-expensive is never the number alone: it’s whether it arrives itemized, evidenced, and without a countdown clock. Honest quotes survive the morning. That’s the whole test.