Why is there no Uber for plumbing/HVAC? (and why there ought to be)

Summary

In July 2024, during a brutal 110-degree week in Dallas, my wife and I came back from vacation to find our HVAC system had failed. This experience frankly absolutely sucked. As our family slowly melted into the floor, I began the frantic process of trying to find someone to fix it.Over the course of five days, I got three quotes. Here’s what that looked like:HVAC Company #1: 5 days to get someone onsite, missed the first appointment, quoted me $14K for a system with roughly $3K of materials.HVAC Company #2: 1 day to onsite, staggering $22K quote.HVAC Company #3: Same-day onsite, $6K quote.The same problem, in the same city, and it took nearly a week to sort through an answer that solved the problem. In the end, I was convinced I was still not getting an optimized price, but when you’re getting cook you gotta make decisions. I chose the cheapest quote with the hope that nothing bad would come if quality was meaningfully worse with the cheaper option.The Core ProblemI walked away from that experience extremely frustrated. I was particularly irritated that the “high-trust” companies in Dallas, the ones with thousands of glowing Google reviews, were the worst offenders when it came to price gouging. I spent weeks researching these companies and came away convinced that most of them paid for fake reviews to overtake negative ones. It felt like wandering through a Bizarro-world of a rapidly degrading consumer experience, at ever-rising prices, consolidated among fewer and fewer players, propped up by fake reviews and misleading advertising.Why does it take five days to get three completely different quotes on something that happens to millions of Americans every year? Why is the experience so slow, so expensive, so inconsistent, and so completely lacking transparency?Why Does This Suck So Much?We wanted to properly understand the core reasons why this degrading experience is occurring. We met with hundreds of CEOs, investors, and industry experts; the result of which we b...