Effective July 9, 2026. If I change these terms, the date changes with them.
Ismail Systems LLC is an Illinois company, run by one person — me, Sam Ismail. These terms cover this website and my service, Third Shift: after-hours phone answering for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractors. Using the site or engaging the service means you accept them. A signed service agreement, where one exists, governs over this page wherever the two differ.
Third Shift answers a contractor’s after-hours line as that contractor’s own company: it separates a real emergency from a routine call, books routine work onto the shop’s schedule, pages the shop’s on-call tech for emergencies, and texts callers back when a call drops. I review its work nightly and put a written report on the client’s desk every Monday. The service takes and routes calls; the shop remains the one performing the trade work, setting its prices, and deciding whom to dispatch.
Set-up is $3,000 — half at signing, half at go-live. Ongoing service is $1,500 per 30 days, month-to-month. There is no long-term contract: walk away any time and I refund the unused days of your current month. Your phone number, your call history, and the setup go with you.
At least five new booked jobs in the first thirty days from go-live — booked from after-hours calls the service answered — or you get all of it back: the full $4,500, meaning the $3,000 set-up and the $1,500 first month, both. It goes in writing before day one. The guarantee needs the full thirty-day window — a fair shot at five jobs — so it does not apply to a month you end early.
Every text the service sends is transactional — tied to a call or a request the recipient made themselves. If you call or text a line the service answers, you may receive texts related to your own call: a booking confirmation, a callback notice, a message the shop asked me to pass along. Consent comes from your own inbound call or text; there is no marketing, and numbers are never sold or shared with third parties for marketing purposes. Message and data rates may apply and message frequency varies. Reply STOP to any message to opt out — it is honored immediately — or HELP for help. The privacy page says the same thing about texts to my own number, (847) 906-2560.
Business calls may be recorded for quality and training. Any recorded line discloses this at the start of the call. Illinois is a two-party-consent state and this business operates accordingly.
The service answers with the prices, hours, service area, and on-call contacts the client gives me. Clients agree to keep that information accurate and to tell me when it changes; the service repeats what it was given.
I run this service carefully and check its work every night, but no phone system — human or machine — catches every call perfectly. To the fullest extent Illinois law allows: the service is provided as described and not warranted beyond the written guarantee above; Ismail Systems LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, including lost profits or lost business, arising from use of the site or the service; and total liability for any claim is capped at the fees actually paid to me in the ninety days before the claim arose. Nothing here limits liability that Illinois law does not allow to be limited. The shop — not Ismail Systems — is responsible for the trade work it performs and for its own dispatch decisions. If someone has a life-threatening emergency, they should call 911, not an answering service.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois. Any dispute belongs in the state or federal courts sitting in Cook County, Illinois.
Email sam@ismailsystems.com and a person — the only person here — will answer.