Originally Posted by ZTT

Short answer, in this first sentence, is the letting agency should pay it, since their job, at the very least, should involve showing the tenants around the property and knowing and explaining how everything works and where everything is.

Instead the tenant calls them and they go "hurrr durrr how are we supposed to know how the properties we manage work", call another business they're in bed with to overcharge for nothing and expect someone else to pay for it?

They 220% knew what the problem was, and no way is this the first time it happened; they simply went the usual route of calling out their mate with a white van.

Having said that (correct answer)...

If I was the landlord, I'd eat the fee because who cares, I'm a parasitic bloodsucker who is too busy playing golf on the Costa Del Crime to worry about flat #87 of my 2500 property portfolio, most of which lies empty as thousands die homeless and get priced out of areas of their own country. Or, depending on the price and location of this British property, I'm a Russian, Chinese or Arabic "businessman".

If I was the tenant I'd eat the fee, because I'm too much of a dummy to just type "extractor hood suddenly not working" into Google and resolve the problem in five seconds.

And if I was the contractor I would definitely charge $70 for the 10 cents in gas I had to use.

I was scratching my balls and sniffing my fingers while liking right-wing posts on Facebook when I got the call, but I could have been curing cancer, couldn't I?

It's not like being called out is a basic aspect of the motherfucking job I chose to do and I don't already factor in the cost (times ten) when I'm actually required to do some work.

I'm sure computer programmers charge for 'pressing the power button on the PC' and 'clicking the desktop icon' too.

And sure I could have just asked the tenant over the phone to try what I did when I got there, to rule out the simple/obvious stuff, but how would that have made me a lazy, piece of shit shyster?

Obviously it makes more sense to lose future work by being a greedy asshole than have a customer feel like they owe me one, because, like a firefighter under Chernobyl, I carried out the arduous task of depressing a plastic button in a kitchen at no extra charge.