Originally posted by: webnewland
Anyone else? Really need some help here
Service call flat fee... (coming from a pc repair tech... and am sure pretty similar to this situation)
Things you may not realize:
1. Gas cost money to come out to ur house
2. Time has to be blocked out for that period that he has to find out what is wrong + do repairs if needed. Time = money... even if you lived 5 mins away... that would be at least 30 mins gone considering trip + diagnosis)
3. The expenses (union dues, wear and tear on vehicle, other little sh1t u would never think of), expertise (mandatory license and bond, credentials, schooling time, apprenticship time), he had to tell u what was wrong and what u could do to fix the situation since u didn't wtf was wrong to begin with
4. You know how much money a person/company would lose if they came out for something and it was really nothing at all?
5. Sometimes it reduces the amount of false alarm calls... Say if everyone complained their net being down and not working but all it was was a simple reset of the modem, or forgot to plug in a cord/power etc.... This tells them that hey... stupid mistakes like that cost money [this doesn't apply in ur case but nevertheless i've experienced one too many times]
Personally I think the plumber actually saved u some money + he was lazy because how would you like to pay him $75 an hour to dig around and find out the exact place of leak? Would you have felt a lot better to pay him a few hundred dollars to do that?
I learned it the hard way but overtime I realize the value of my time. I use to do free estimates for customers to the point where I wasn't getting anywork done and a great deal of my time was spent doing free stuff. Sometimes I would spend hours just to research the problem/solution just to have the customer say they don't want to have it fixed because it cost too much and walked away free. Eventually this made me feel quite reluctant to diagnose repairs.... By creating a "bench" fee + on-site service call fee, I am able to keep the checks and balances for my time spent + eliminate all the BS jobs.
Seriously if people are not willing to pay a measly $35-45 (in house) or $80 (on-site) estimate fee, they were never serious about the repair or they were not in need of repair to begin with. These fees are always deducted out of my total repair estimate anyway... its for those customers who decide not to repair that have to really shell out the bench fee.
Psycologically yeah u probably feel cheated, raped for the service fee but think how you would have cheated the service person for his time and expertise.
-JR
side story:
I recently had a customer call saying he wants to share his internet connection w/ his elderly parents living 30 mins away via some creative telephone+56kmodem+dialup networking scheme... I told him it wasn't worth it and it would cost a lot to have me go to both physical locations to have that setup + purchase required parts etc.
He had the nerve to ask me to walk him thru it because he couldnt figure it out himself but he knew he could do it if I walked him through it. He said he had a pc troubleshooting degree at Ranken Tech or whatever it was, he had read tons of books, etc etc... I was already getting annoyed and told him that if he has a degree then why not attempt to do it himself instead of asking me. I shrugged him off.
30 mins later the guy calls back to tell me he had this ingenious idea to offer ISP services off of his fricken DSL line. He asked me how much to set that up lolz... I told him that was impossible since the equiptment cost would be too much. He then asked then how come AOL, PeoplePc etc were able to do it... at this point I was half pissed and half laughing my ass off. The irony blew me away when I asked him what kind of broadband he had and he said he got it off of his wireless from his neighbors lolz... I told him that shit is illegal lolz.... AND THE FVCKIN GUY STILL WAS PERSISTANT I told him basically he could pay me about $80 an hour and I could give him 100% undivided attention lolz. After he told my why was I such an ass for answering just a few questions (the phone convo lasted about 30 mins), I told him bluntly MY TIME COST MONEY and hung up.
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