Property Manager's Handyman Overcharge?

[Ian Verzoni]

I'm active duty military.  I live in NV but rent out my property in GA.  My property manager doesn't notify me of charges for repairs less than $100.

My tenants keep the house very clean and have always paid on time, so I like to reward that behavior with being very responsive to their maintenance requests, which are ALOT.  Every little thing in the house they have nit picked and requested maintenance action.  

The latest was they requested that one of the bathroom cabinet hinges be fixed because it was "loose", not broken, not falling off but "loose". 

Since this is a small repair the property manager approves the work without asking me, which has been fine to this point.

However, this time, their handy man charged me $75!  $75 to replace a $5 hinge?  I could replace a hinge in 15 min probably.  I assume a full time handy man could do so even faster.  Lets assume 10 min, therefore he charged me $70 for 10 min of work?  That's $420 / hour???  Even if you factor in his 2 min drive to the Lowes around the corner the charges seem very high as it is.

How should I react to this?  Should I take up the issue with my property manager?  Wait till this happens again?  Or discuss with my property manager that small items like this should be handled by my tenant?

[Doug Pintarch]

Ian I would ask the PM for an itemized bill of the latest repair so you can see how they arrived at that number.  That will give you a starting point to contest it if need be!