Luke gave us a call and confirmed the timing of his visit. Luke has been here before and he is a wonderful, professional employe of Harker H&C. We scheduled the visit because our Aprilaire humidifier that was installed by Harker 6 years ago on our new furnace stopped working. Luke quickly diagnosed the issue as a plugged water supply line to the humidifier. He told me that we'd need a new connection valve and a new length of copper tubing, and that he would make the connection to the softened water line instead of the water supply to the house, to reduce the chance of re-plugging. He said that he had been trained to never connect humidifiers to the unsoftened water line. He told me that the valve would be $160 and the copper tubing would be $440. We need the humidifier so I told him to go ahead. He finished the job, and with the $130 service call fee, the cost total was over $775. Luke was great but I called Harker to question the copper tubing charge after I looked up the cost of copper tubing and found that I could have purchased the 12-foot length at the local hardware store for less than $30. I was told, "That's how we bill our jobs." Apparently the cost is set by the task and that it would have been the same if instead of having it done mid-morning on a Monday I had scheduled it for late on Saturday night. Like I started this comment, Luke did a wonderful job, but next time I need work done, I'll do a little cost-comparison with other firms before I schedule the work.