A while ago when we opened the garage door, a child's bike is parked outside and the garage door gently hit the bike and stopped. Then the door stopped working, seemed to me it's a safety design to avoid severe problems by cutting off the power.
An Elektriker stopped by to check our power outlet, and we asked him if he knows how to reset the garage door controller. He thought he could fix it by replacing a part of it, then he did it and there was a flash and we smelled the burning odor and seemed to me it had caused damage to the controller.
He said he had to reach out to the company that designs this controller and then came back for the second time, replaced something, then same thing happened again, something burned and we saw it started smoking. He left and came back for another two times with no luck. We felt that he's actually clueless and was doing the job by trial-and-error. Each time he always said he knew what's going on and he would be back with new parts.
Then he eventually fixed it but then he also charged us with all of this "trial-and-error" service fee for around 700Fr of his time(5h), plus all of the replacement parts that make the total charge to 1,500Fr.
Do you think if that's a fair charge and could I negotiate with him about the price?
Simple answer, no. If you didn't like his approach, you should have asked someone else to do the job. I mean, you can try, by all means, but it is his word against yours. Good luck.
I am not so sure ... we had a similar situation once with a small company we used to do all of our electric and IT requirements following a house move. The engineer sent to us was very slow on some jobs and was unable to actually find the satellite coordinates we gave him for our TV for example.
Our bill was just over CHF 6,000. We had a word with the Company and pointed out that we were happy enough with the overall service, but didn't feel so comfortable paying full hourly rates for incompetent and/or slow work. The boss agreed and reduced the bill by CHF 2,000.
Not quite the same circumstance, but perhaps worth a discussion.
Fair? No, but in Switzerland calling someone in is like starting the meter in a taxi and it's not switched off until the job is done. Then add on running costs and a flat fee. For everything where you have to get something done you should discuss and agree on terms but also ask how much that in itself would cost.
Isn't everything negotiable? I wouldn't pay for the time and parts that didn't work.