We had water enter the basement of our home when Provo, Utah experienced a "100 year storm" last September. After checking with our insurance company, we were referred to Service Masters of Salt Lake. We spent many hours vacuuming carpet and removing as much water as possible. Service Masters technicians came the next day to assess the situation and set up their equipment.
It is my opinion that Service Masters is in the business of inflating their total bill as quickly as possible. They loaded our premise with air movers (aka large fans), which they charge approximately $25/day to leave at your premise. We ran up a bill of over $1500 the first day the equipment was there. Service Masters did nothing to shorten the amount of time that their equipment was there. They said that they were going to put up a zip wall to isolate the affected area. They never put up the wall. They placed two dehumidifiers to pull the water out of the area. Unfortunately, one of the units was defective and never worked. They never brought another dehumidifier. They never attempted to extract any more water from the carpet using their truck mounted vacuums. They waited three days before they decided that the carpet pad should be removed. They just put their expensive fans in and let them blow the humid air around, while charging you thousands of dollars and telling you that your area is drying slowly.
They originally gave us a verbal price estimate. After we learned that the claim was not going to be covered by insurance, we asked what they could do to help minimize the bill. They were able to remove over half of the air movers after the first day (suspicious?). We agreed to perform much of the manual labor that they included in their original verbal estimate (removed the carpet pad, vented the sheet rock, removed portions of the sheet rock, and re-positioned the air movers to dry the area) and their final bill was still 70% over their estimate. We tried to dispute their billing with several levels of the company, but they were unreasonable in every manner.
Please if you do happen to be in a situation where Service Masters of Salt Lake is your last option, get a written price estimate. The law says that they must get your approval if their price is going to exceed the estimate by over 10%. Even if you are up to your ankles in water, get a written estimate. It will make your life so much easier in the future.