Electrician's Success International???

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About getting reasonable prices . . . I received two calls this weekend:



Around 7:30 PM Friday, I received a frantic call from a woman who told me the fire dept. had been to her house for smoke from the panel. They told her to not use the electricity, and to call an electrician.

I asked a few questions, she asked "what about your 'free estimates'?, and I explained that pricing repairs requires doing trouble-shooting, and that I was giving the 'free estimate' emergency rates over the phone.

I told her that I would have to charge $200 plus materials for the first hour for an emergency call, which included the 20-minute drive, and getting the power back on, but safely, was the priority.

She told me that they are using the power now, believe it or not. She apparently had an issue with the cost of getting me over there, said she'd call back, and of course, I never heard back from her.

I hope she's happy with whatever she got by saving the $200.



Saturday morning, a man called about getting his audio/video system wired for that evening's pay-per-view fight party he was going to have. He said everything was connected, but not working properly.

Expecting a mix of re-connections and equipment settings, and a half-hour drive each way, I said the least I could possibly charge was $200. He said that was much more than he expected to have to pay.

I guess you can tell that I had a quiet weekend.



I agree that our work is not just a hobby, and that we don't need the practice, but if we always hold out for what we want and/or need to get, we may be idle. I'd rather make some money than none.
 
Good point. When things slow down in the resort area I live in, we need to become more efficient, and better at what we do, and sometimes we need to lower our pricing in order to compete. Some will say that they would rather stay home than to work at a discounted rate but how long can that last. I think alot of the disagreements on this subject are due to the different markets we all work in. I've seen quite a few ECs think they want to work in this beautiful mountain area but won't pay the price or sacrifice it takes to do it over the long haul.
 
Yeah I had my satilute installed and the guy running the cable to the receiver just drilled a hole in my hard wood floors. I was like buddy couldn't you have fished a wire and put it in a box (house was built in 01 and had a clear open access below TV in the basement). He told me fish tape and doing that was $60 I was like is that all? why didn't you tell me that, now I got a hole in my floor and the cable was not ran in the joists I had to rerun it when I finished my basement. You get what you pay for. He just slapped it in and went to the next job.
 
I agree with Bob.

No the $50 was for the whole repair. The guy who did it's been in town since who knows when and he knows the value of good customer service. He knows he can't charge you $50 for a $.50 bushing and his service time is included in his repair time, meaning he doesn't charge $50 just for coming out and another $50 for doing the work. The reason he didn't do the job originally is because he is so busy that it's hard to get him.

I live in a town that has a very high number of electrical contractors and it's not that big of a town. You can charge $100 an hr if you want, but you better like soap operas.
 
cowboyjwc said:
I agree with Bob.

No the $50 was for the whole repair. The guy who did it's been in town since who knows when and he knows the value of good customer service. He knows he can't charge you $50 for a $.50 bushing and his service time is included in his repair time, meaning he doesn't charge $50 just for coming out and another $50 for doing the work. The reason he didn't do the job originally is because he is so busy that it's hard to get him.

I live in a town that has a very high number of electrical contractors and it's not that big of a town. You can charge $100 an hr if you want, but you better like soap operas.
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He's not charging $50 for a $.50 bushing.

That's the problem with people. They don't look at what the guy has invested in this job. All they look at is the $.50 part and the fact they paid $50.

He's charging $50 for his time, his overhead expenses and hopefully a profit.
Unfortunatly he must not feel his time is worth much.

So if this guy would have told you a $100 to fix it would you still have used him?

What if they all charged a minimum of $100 to come out?
If they all charged a $100 my guess is people would pay it.

It doesn't make sense that a guy be so busy you have to wait for him but at the same time he can't raise his rates.
Sounds like to me if he's so busy he could raise his price to $75 and it wouldn't hurt him any.
What about the rest of the high number of electrical contractors in town?
Are they all this busy too?
Or is it just this one guy?

If they're all this busy sounds to me like they could all raise their price.
If this guy's the only one that's so busy, you have to wait to get him, sounds to me like he could raise his price.
It doesn't make sense to me, with so many electrical contractors in town, this guy could be so busy and not be able to charge more.

Even a small service call I lose about 2hrs. out of my day with the travel, doing the job and the paper work. At $50 this would be $25 per hour. Take my overhead expenses out of that and what's left? Not much if anything.

If I don't charge enough on a service call I need to make up for it somewhere else. That means I'm going to have to charge another customer more for their job to make it up.
Is it fair for another customer to pay for part of someone else's service call?
 
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At $50 per hour he is giving his time away, and for what? All that repeat business that customer will give him at his supper discount? Wait maybe he might get a referral and get to give some more of his time away to their friends and neighbors too. Been there don’t that, and it does not pay off in the end. I refuse to do residential any more and the soap operas, whining and back biting home owners do make the crap GCs pull a walk in the park.

If you want to give your time or money away, or “give something back to the community” then go do some work for Habitat for Humanity or some other charity you can write off, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are building a loyal clientele by giving your time away.
 
ITO said:
At $50 per hour he is giving his time away, and for what? All that repeat business that customer will give him at his supper discount? Wait maybe he might get a referral and get to give some more of his time away to their friends and neighbors too. Been there don’t that, and it does not pay off in the end. I refuse to do residential any more and the soap operas, whining and back biting home owners do make the crap GCs pull a walk in the park.

If you want to give your time or money away, or “give something back to the community” then go do some work for Habitat for Humanity or some other charity you can write off, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are building a loyal clientele by giving your time away.
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I agree. Everyone wants a bargain and they could care less if you're losing money or if it puts you out of business. There will always be someone to take your place.

One guy didn't want to pay any more than $30 for me to come out and replace a breaker. He already bought the breaker.
I'll let someone who knows the value of good customer service do it. :)
 
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First of all I never said he was an EC. I'm and EC and I don't need one to come out and do service work for me. The gentleman that came out also sells appliances and that business is doing very well for him also.

I know what I'm paying for. If I had known how to fix it, it would have only cost me $.50. My point was if you had read my earlier post is that many of these appliance service techs have no intention of fixing the problem. Just charge you the $100 service call and then give you an estimate so high that you could buy a new one for less.

And everyone is right, nobody does care if you are making money, no more than you care about the big oil companies who are recording record profits while we're all complaining about the price of gas. Though I guess you're right we're all still paying it so it must be OK.
 
cowboyjwc said:
If I had known how to fix it, it would have only cost me $.50.
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I have to disagree.

It would cost you $.50 plus your time.

What's your time worth?

For some people their time is worth more than the $50 so they might pay to have the work done even if they can fix it themselves.

There are plenty of things I can do myself but I would rather pay someone else to do it because I feel my time is more valuable than what it's going to cost me to have them do it.

Your time is one thing you only have so much of. Once it's gone it's gone. You can't buy it back.

If you fixed it yourself you sold your time for $50. You can't buy it back at any price.

If you feel it only cost you $.50 your time must be worthless to you. I hope someone isn't paying you a lot for your worthless time. :)

Also what about getting the part. Do you have the part just laying around your house.
 
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cowboyjwc said:
The gentleman that came out also sells appliances and that business is doing very well for him also.

My point was if you had read my earlier post is that many of these appliance service techs have no intention of fixing the problem. Just charge you the $100 service call and then give you an estimate so high that you could buy a new one for less.
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don't fool yourself, the guy working for $50 is using service as a Loss Leader. He is willing to take a hit on service, whether intentional or not, and hopes to make it up on the retail sales. This was/is Wal-Mart's business plan.

the other appliance techs...how many also have a retail store? how many actually are attempting to just run service? I can assure you that most companies that provide residential service of any type (electric, appliance, plumbing, etc) can not make money simply by charging trip charges and giving high estimates to not get the work. In order to generate enough calls a day to even may that plan possible, you would have to spend a fortune in advertising. Just run the numbers, it's a losing proposition.

My point is look at the whole picture...
 
So the eight years I've spent coaching my sons Little League team is worthless?
The 4 years that I put in as President of the league are worhtless?
My time as the President of the local historical society, my time as a union negoiator, my time serving on the local Simi Valley Days committee, or the local Executive Board of the IAEI or my time on the board of the California Electrical inspectors or running for local office are all worthless?

Sorry, but sometimes it's just not all about the money, but I guess that's just me. Like "left coast Bob" said I love what I do.

Maybe it's just the cowboy in me, but I have everything I need and a lot of stuff I don't. There isn't much out there that I couldn't do without. Like I said in another post, my wife just found out she's healthy, we just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, the kids and the grandkids and our folks are all healthy. Life is good.
 
cowboyjwc said:
So the eight years I've spent coaching my sons Little League team is worthless?
The 4 years that I put in as President of the league are worhtless?
My time as the President of the local historical society, my time as a union negoiator, my time serving on the local Simi Valley Days committee, or the local Executive Board of the IAEI or my time on the board of the California Electrical inspectors or running for local office are all worthless?

Sorry, but sometimes it's just not all about the money, but I guess that's just me. Like "left coast Bob" said I love what I do.
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That's exactly my point.

Sometimes your time is worth more than the money.
To say it would have only cost you $.50 to make the repair is something I disagree with.
It's costing you time that could have been spent doing the things you mention.

Paying someone else to do things gives you more time to do all the things you mention above.

What I'm saying is time spent doing all those things is very valuable so you should charge plenty for your time.

If you're not charging enough you'll be working so much trying to make ends meet you'll never have the time to do these things.

A lot of people love what they do. Football players, basketball players, Actors, etc.
Just because you like what you do doesn't mean you shouldn't get paid well for doing it.
 
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aline said:
A lot of people love what they do. Football players, basketball players, Actors, etc.
Just because you like what you do doesn't mean you shouldn't get paid well for doing it.
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I think you missed John's point entirely.

My idea of 'paid well' may be very different than yours.

My idea of paid well may be less than yours.

That has absolutely no bearing on which one of us is more satisfied with their situation. :smile:
 
and I think y'all miss what Aline is saying....there was a discussion (ok, many discussions) on this site about moonlighting...I remember one in particular where John talked about how he used to moonlight when he worked for other companies before he became an inspector. Now, bear with me....

I don't think guys should have to moonlight...I think they should be paid enough for their "40 hrs" that they can spend the rest of their time with their family doing the things John listed.

In order to pay a man a living wage, the company must charge enough. Companies like the $50 repairman can not pay anyone a good wage to do the work. That is probably why the owner is the one running the service calls and there is a wait for him. How much could he possibly pay a service technician?

It's not about whether you think $50k a year is enough or $100k a year is enough...it's about whether either amount will allow your employee to purchase a house and live like a human being.

Now, in my area, a starter home is around $250,000.....that's between $1500 and $2000 month in mortgage/taxes for the average buyer....

So for someone around here to work 40 hrs and still have time for all the other things that make life fun, the household needs min $100,000.

oh, well, carry on...
 
How many of you would rather work for the guy that charges $50 per hour and how many of you would rather work for the guy that charges $100 per hour?

Who do you think will be able to provide you with better pay and benefits?

Odds are the guy charging $100 per hour is paying his employees better and providing them with better benefits. That's why he has to charge more.

This may not necessarily be the case but I believe the odds are better.

If one guy charges $65 per hour and he sends out an inexperienced electrician, that just started last week, and it takes him 8 hrs. to complete the job but the other guy charges $85 per hour and he sends out a skilled electrician that has years of experience and he completes the job in 4 hrs. which one is the better deal?

The inexperienced electrician cost $520.
For the same job the experienced electrician cost $340 and the experienced electrician probably did a better job.

Comparing contractor's hourly rates is a poor way to judge which one is the cheapest or which one is the better deal. Yet this is the question I'm asked just about everytime a customer calls; "How much do you charge per hour?"
 
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