Service call charge

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IMO, I feel like many of the answers from one man shops are " use your discretion, don't charge, ect ect".
When you have employees, the decision is much easier. You simply charge.
All time must be accounted for. There are so many ways to loose money in this business, no point to add more.
It's very hard sometimes to make business decisions, but they need to be made.
I found out that the warm fuzzy feeling's do not pay the bills. My time is important and worth money.
 
jmsbrush said:
IMO, I feel like many of the answers from one man shops are " use your discretion, don't charge, ect ect".
When you have employees, the decision is much easier. You simply charge.
All time must be accounted for. There are so many ways to loose money in this business, no point to add more.
It's very hard sometimes to make business decisions, but they need to be made.
I found out that the warm fuzzy feeling's do not pay the bills. My time is important and worth money.
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yup, "the warm fuzzy feeling's do not pay the bills", when I started out, most the customers I din't charge, just took the deal and never even said thank you, and then they usually went to someone else when they had other work, I soon learned there were bills to pay, and charging customers for all my work earned their respect and future work, I guess the ones I did free work for thought I was a dummy, and they were right.
 
This is how we handle the situation OP described;

When they call, explain that if its an error on your part it will be fixed under warranty, if not they'll have to pay.

When you arrive, they sign a contract stating the same BEFORE you even look at it.

And in your case, you would've walked away without losing money.

I saw comments stating you should've had a warranty call figured in the job; even so, that's not an excuse to eat something that wasn't your fault. What if a true warranty situation arises on the job next week? Now you're even further in the hole.
 
From business strategy, it sometimes pays to give and you will be given a chance to take.

You may even be awarded a next major bid even if you're not the lowest bidder based on good service.
 
480sparky said:
This was something you could have solved over the phone.:cool:
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I agree. We would have first attempted to talk the customer through resetting the bearker.

If that didn't work, we would then explain to the customer that there would be a trip fee and a minimum fee for resetting the breaker unless it is something that we did to cause the problem during the service upgrade then there would, of course, be no charge.

We handle calls like this all the time and never have an issue. Sometimes it's something we did, most of the time it's something totally unrelated and we collect our fees for the call.
 
Sierrasparky said:
If the tennant admits to turning off the breaker then It's on the customer or tennants dime. You certanly could discount the price for good will. I have been in this situation before and it's not an easy one. The customer most likely called you because they felt that you had not done something. They probabley felt there would be no charge.

I'd charge something.
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He probably "felt there was no charge" because because the op didn't make it clear during the phone that "there will be a charge if it is unrelated to the work we did today, but if it is something we did to cause the problem there of course will be no charge".

Very simple solution, get it clear on the phone, before you dispatch to the call so everyone understands the expectations.

We run hundreds of service calls a week and I can tell you that the overwhelming majority of people are very undertanding and reasonable as long as you set the expectation in advance, on the phone, before you go out.

Once in a while you'll get a very unreasonable person under these circumstances and once they realize your not coming out, unless they agree to the terms, they all of a sudden become reasonable.

It works like a charm and can save alot of confusion, misunderstanding and money you should be collecting.
 
flyboy said:
He probably "felt there was no charge" because because the op didn't make it clear during the phone that "there will be a charge if it is unrelated to the work we did today, but if it is something we did to cause the problem there of course will be no charge".

Very simple solution, get it clear on the phone, before you dispatch to the call so everyone understands the expectations.

We run hundreds of service calls a week and I can tell you that the overwhelming majority of people are very undertanding and reasonable as long as you set the expectation in advance, on the phone, before you go out.

Once in a while you'll get a very unreasonable person under these circumstances and once they realize your not coming out, unless they agree to the terms, they all of a sudden become reasonable.

It works like a charm and can save alot of confusion, misunderstanding and money you should be collecting.
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Up front information on terms and policy really makes things easy for everyone, but I think some guys fail to get this critical information to the customer before the call.
 
Went on a service call for a friend of a friend the other day, I asked my friend some questions and he said he had done everything I asked. There was a dead short in a circuit and I started to look a round and unplugged a couple of things (which I asked if he had done and was told yes) and the short cleared, looked at the lamp cord and it was fried.

I told the lady that I could rewire the lamp for $60 dollars, she seemed a little taken aback and of course it was "$60 for a lamp cord" No ma'am $5 for a lamp cord, but my time is still my time weather I'm here or in the shop and I'm throwing in the service call.

She said she'd call me.:roll:
 
cowboyjwc said:
Went on a service call for a friend of a friend the other day, I asked my friend some questions and he said he had done everything I asked. There was a dead short in a circuit and I started to look a round and unplugged a couple of things (which I asked if he had done and was told yes) and the short cleared, looked at the lamp cord and it was fried.

I told the lady that I could rewire the lamp for $60 dollars, she seemed a little taken aback and of course it was "$60 for a lamp cord" No ma'am $5 for a lamp cord, but my time is still my time weather I'm here or in the shop and I'm throwing in the service call.

She said she'd call me.:roll:
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Had something similar to that. Lady wanted a light fixture bulb changed. She didn't call back either. :D
 
I just had something like this happen on Sunday. Customer calls me up and tells me that he can't get two AFCI breakers to reset. I had installed them. He asks me how to reset them and I tell him to put the switch all the way to the off position, then back to the on position.

He said he did so but it still wasn't working. He asked if I could take a look at it, or even just replace the breakers with regular ones. I briefly considered that the breakers might just be faulty. None of the NFL games on Sunday afternoon were overly exciting so I headed down there.

I get there and he's got panel open, and he tried moving one of the wires to a spare breaker that I left in there, but didn't know what to do with the white wire and he tried putting the breaker right next to the main breaker where the bus is only wide enough to accommodate the main breaker. Anyway, long story short I put the panel back the way it was when I installed it originally (took me about 3 minutes), then reset the breakers. They energized properly.

So the guy asks me what the problem was and I show him by tripping the AFCI (test button) then putting the handle back to the off position before putting it into the on position.

He says, "OH, you have to put the switch ALL THE WAY OFF on these kind of breakers? I've never heard of having to do that before."

I gently explain that just about every breaker ever made needs to be reset that way. He seems to accept that.

I end up charging him $50 in cash, which was fine for my 30 minutes. Before I leave, he mentions that he had been an electrician's apprentice before, but obviously before these AFCI breakers came out, and AGAIN tries to sell me on the idea that having to turn the breaker all the way off before turning it on is some kind of new-fangled thing.

It was worth giving him that price just to see how ignorant he really is.
 
jaylectricity said:
He says, "OH, you have to put the switch ALL THE WAY OFF on these kind of breakers? I've never heard of having to do that before."

. . . and AGAIN tries to sell me on the idea that having to turn the breaker all the way off before turning it on is some kind of new-fangled thing.
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Maybe he'd only been exposed to CH breakers up till now. :roll:
 
wxstevens said:
I finished a service upgrade yesterday and am awaiting inspection scheduled tommorow. Tonight, after six, I get a call from the owner of the house (it's a rental) and he says the water heater doesn't work. I assumed it may be a bad breaker or I messed something up so I told him I would be right out. I get there, 23 miles away, only to find the renter turned the breaker off and couldn't figure how to reset it. I turned the breaker on and was done. How do you handle this? I am afraid I am going to be told I'll have to eat this one. Any advice is appreciated.
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If the customer is a rational Capitalist then he will expect an invoice from you, however if you chose to work for a Collectivist then you can write this one off.
 
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