chavez you are trying to dictate profit margin, this should be done by the repair company. personally I don't think 50% profit margin is too high, I normally make at least that on the small paint, new base and drywall stuff that I take on that I sub out, actually I think 50% is a good number. here is what happens and you guys might not deal with this so much if you are doing mostly mitigation and not on vendor programs, I sometimes work for companies that ARE vendors for insurance companies as a sub contractor. I hear the whole sub bill complaint deal all the time. here is a scenerio, you gotta go in put on a roof and do some major work to a home, the bonehead insurance adjuster says we can't pay that much you are charging too much for the roof. so the vendor can't say dude thats what we are charging deal with it, if they wanna stay a vendor very long, soooooo the vendor says look my sub is charging this we have to have this amount. the adjuster says ok let me see the sub's bill. which IMO is none of the insurance companies business. so which brings up another topic that might not fit in this thread, and that is profit margin, IMO a full line restoration can't make it on 20% margin that they are now locked into by turning in a subs bill, here is why often these jobs take over 2 mos for the insurance adjuster to get off his ass and pay the bill, then when they do most of the time there is the customers name, the restoration companies name and anywhere from one to 3 mortgage companies name on the check, so imagine a scenario I describe, you have 80 k in a 100k job, you wait 60 days for payment to be issued, then you wait another 45 to 60 days to get all 3 mortgage companies to sign off on the check, meanwhile a couple things got broken, some things where left out of the bid by accident, you have 80k in materials and sub bills you are floating. now you tell me how you are gonna make it with only a 20k profit?? what happens is its too little too late by the time the restoration company gets paid, because they have many other projects they are working and facing similar challenges, they are robbing peter to pay paul just to pay the subs and keep them from mutanty.
this whole situation is a product of insurance company politics they created this without any doubt, one of the companies that was a big time vendor for reconstruction I used to sub for, was faced with all these problems they ended up going out of business because of it. keep in mind these people are likely just trying to keep their heads above water and eeek out a living, in a climate of nearly impossible challenges, this is their lively hood, its important to see this from the restoration companies side here and understand the challenges they face. renegging on what they agreed to pay the subs is wrong, however turning in inflated sub bills is not IMO and should not be prosecuted, for the reasons above