Someone needs to hold me back from posting the following on a local community FB group. I'm really torqued at a local company as I'm seeing them do extreme price gouging with the windstorm damage. As you have probably observed I try to avoid posting inflammatory or mean-spirited posts on CB. I rarely post on the community group as I'm somewhat known in the community as someone who represents our Church due to my past calling with Stake Public Affairs/Communications and also doing social media volunteer work for our local city's historical society. But I'm wondering if I should do this in this particular situation. Also, one complication is this logging company is just a half-block from our neighborhood street. 

Here is what I want to post.

 

I'm totally disgusted with the price gouging I'm seeing with the landscape/logging companies. I understand that with the events of the past week that some price increases are appropriate. But what I've seen happen to my neighbors is really upsetting. My widow neighbor across the street had a tree fall into her house into her living room. It's still lodged in there. Her next door neighbor had a tree fall onto their house, but it doesn't look like much damage happened. It's an easy removal with a crane. I get that needing a crane adds to the cost. I also understand that extricating a tree from a house also adds to the cost.

But let me share with you some pricing in recent history.

Earlier this year we had identified a tall fir that needed to be cut down in our yard close to our house. It was a less busy time so pricing will be cheaper. I called the local company and asked for a bid. (I am not going to name names here.) They quoted me $850 to take one tree down including taking the wood away and all the branches. They brought the crane, took down the tree, and did a great job in less than an hour. It still seemed to me to be high pricing from what I've experienced in the past, but I wanted to support local business. Several months ago another neighbor down the street contracted with this same company - and were charged $2,000 to remove a tree that was right next to the street. (I don't know if a crane was used for that or not.) I'm sure that neighbor kept the wood thereby saving the company expenses of taking the wood away.

Now we get to our current situation with my two adjoining neighbors. The trees in question were on the north side of the widow's house and the other tree was on the south side of the other house - so they were within 40 ft of each other. Each neighbor was quoted $4,500 to remove the tree. A question was asked about getting a discount for being right next to each other - but no. The quote was firm at $4,500. That's insane and that is obscene price gouging. This particular company has always been on the high end of prices compared to other companies. I'm totally disgusted and resolved not to do business with this company again.

Thoughts??