Author Topic: Charging by the hour is unfair!  (Read 12426 times)

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Offline SteveThackeryTopic starter

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Charging by the hour is unfair!
« on: June 30, 2024, 10:35:07 pm »
Reading another thread on this topic got me thinking about all the things wrong with charging by the hour.

Yes, 99% of repairers charge by the hour. But change your point of view to that of a customer.  Firstly, charging by the hour encourages the repairer to work as slowly as possible. If the repairer wants to treat themselves to something nice but expensive, all they need to do is slow down and take longer over each repair.  Yes, I know that sometimes you have enough work that you don't need to stretch it out, but the customer doesn't know that. All they know is that it is in your interest to work as slowly as possible.  So why should they trust you?

Secondly, the more incompetent you are, the longer it takes you to do a repair.  In other words, the customer pays an incompetent repairer more than a competent one.  How is that OK?

Thirdly, charging a customer for your time when you have failed to fix something is profoundly unfair.  You see, you might charge the customer for your time, but the customer doesn't want your time; that's not what they are interested in.  They want their appliance fixing.  They are paying for a repair, not for half a day of you farting about and getting nowhere with it.  I once had a really tricky intermittent misfire on a car which I couldn't find, so I took it to a technician who had loads of fancy diagnostic equipment and was considered to be a genuine expert.  He had a monthly column in a trade magazine.  Anyway, he hooked up the car and messed about for two hours before giving up. He charged me for two hours labour - something like £180, I think.  I paid up but felt utterly ripped off. I drove the car there with a misfire.  Two hours later I drove the car away, still with a misfire, but £180 poorer.  I paid out money and got nothing.  I was pretty pissed off.

These issues are all due to the broken business model repairers use.  There is a disconnect between what the customer wants and what you provide.  No customer wants to buy your time. A customer wants to buy a repair.  It is irrelevant to the customer whether it takes you ten minutes or ten hours - they just want their widget to work and to pay what feels like a fair price.

Maybe every job should start with an up-front firm quote to the customer, and should include a no fix / no fee commitment.  If that is too restrictive, then give the customer an estimate and say that you will contact them to ask their agreement to proceed if you find you need to charge more for the repair.  But again, NO FIX, NO FEE!

What say you?
 

Offline shabaz

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2024, 11:16:35 pm »
I do very few repairs, only for select people, since I don't make a living off it, but times are hard, and I can understand that people do not wish to work for hours and not get paid even if they cannot fix it.

 My general philosophy is to always try to leave the customer happy. To me, that means, that if I cannot fix the problem, I at least perform any other quick fixes/tweaks/cleaning-up while I've got the equipment apart, and if I find I have left-over parts that were intended for the repair, then if appropriate, give them to the customer so they know you were not trying to rip them off, plus, give them your expert advice since if you cannot fix it, your expert advice may be 'it's beyond economic repair' or whatever happens to be the case. People understand that the diagnosis is still valuable even if it cannot be fixed. I've never had anyone get upset because something couldn't be fixed, if I give them insight, and if they learn things from it (and feel they have learned from it), e.g. how to recognize the fault or how to avoid the fault in future.

As to whether the engineer calls up the customer to warn them that they are getting nowhere and that they still have to charge for an hour or two, that's for sure the right thing to do, and could form part of the contract, although most people will implicitly do that since very few people want to rip others off. Most people would have no problem to include that in a contract I expect, and if they don't want to do that, then that's a warning sign not to use that engineer.

 
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Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #2 on: July 01, 2024, 12:15:58 am »
No one knows at the onset what a repair will take.  One solution to your issue is a fixed price which will result in a profit for the repairer averaged over all jobs.  Would you be happier with this?  Would you not complain when the item was returned in a couple of minutes after a reset button was pushed (yes, it sometimes is that easy).
 
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Offline JoeyG

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #3 on: July 01, 2024, 12:30:44 am »
The best way forward for a repair  is to provide a free "*estimate"   by spending 15min on the repair issue and getting this back to the customer quickly.
With the caveat  - that an *estimate is the best educated guess  and provide some reasoning around the *estimated review of the issue.
(If more issues are found)

An experienced repairer  (familiar with  similar products) will have at least some idea.

An experienced  and honest repairers (not familiar with the product) will say   - I need to look at this in detail and there will be a small assessment cost before the repair cost. 

Then the customer can make an informed financial/emotional decision - either get it repaired,  move to another repairer or  put the product in the bin as it is beyond  economical repair  (it's no point  flogging a dead horse).
« Last Edit: July 31, 2024, 11:09:01 pm by JoeyG »
 
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Offline DaJMasta

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #4 on: July 01, 2024, 02:15:57 am »
What's the alternative then?  This really just sounds like a moan from a dissatisfied customer to me.

If you think your repair tech is going to pad out hours or take forever because they're incompetent, why are you taking your work to them?  Their business lives or dies off of recommendations and reputation, so if they have a reputation for taking forever and charging for it, they're not going to last long.

They charge by the hour because it is a somewhat representative measure of the needed effort. Often the price of parts is small and the labor involved is most of the work, and they don't pay their bills by making 8 repairs in a day, they pay their bills by repairing things for 8 billable hours a day, so why should they spend time working out prices for every little potential fault in every piece of equipment they service?  What about that intermittent fault that takes them 6 hours with specialized equipment to track down to change a $5 part?  Are you expected to charge less because it ended up being 'something easy'?  What if the customer demands something arbitrary that probably doesn't have to do with repairing the fault?  What if the time involved in disassembling, cleaning, troubleshooting, and repairing something really is long enough to be worth more than the cost of the thing being fixed?  Is the repairer expected to cap their charge at the price of a new one because the customer didn't realize it may not be worth the effort?


I'm not in this business, the only repair work I do is on my own equipment and I only sell it working because I hate how variable the time spent on a repair can be and would be annoyed and probably invest too much time into repairs I thought I could do but ended up not being able to complete, but I understand that they're trying to make a living and need to charge for their work in what seems like a fair way.  You don't seem to an alternative pricing structure, let alone one suitable even for a niche repair business where a customer with an outlier won't immediately take advantage of, so why moan?  If the repairer you take it to can't give you an idea of what it may cost or what may be wrong from a short initial conversation, or if you don't have confidence that they'll do their job and price you honestly for the hours they actually worked, why are you going to their shop at all?
 
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Offline Smokey

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #5 on: July 01, 2024, 02:37:17 am »
This is a silly rant.  If you knew you would only be happy with a "fix it or no charge" service then its on YOU to only enter into an agreement with those terms.

Within reason and being legally compliant, a business offering a service can choose whatever terms for that service they please.  It's then up to the customer to decide if they want to deal with that business.  If you can't find a business that has terms that are acceptable to you, then either you are the problem or you just identified a market and you should start your own business to fill that market.
 
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Offline fzabkar

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #6 on: July 01, 2024, 04:18:22 am »
I agree with the OP. I always operated on a no fix, no fee basis, and I always quoted on the job, not the hours. If I were billing on an hourly basis, I would feel a great deal more pressure, especially if the client were watching, as they usually were.
 
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Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #7 on: July 01, 2024, 05:59:00 am »
Well yeah, that's how a market works. Either the service is good and customers pay for it, or it's bad and word gets around.  There might be professional organizations to promulgate some standard of service, while also supporting and defending members, and providing a route for customers to air grievances; but the extent that this arises depends on the level of service, how expensive and risky it is, how commonly people engage with it, etc.  Electronics repair generally doesn't have such organizations; auto repair, to some extent; medical practice, generally yes; etc.

So, if you can find customers and reviews, or afford to spend a one-off trying the service and see how it goes, that should be your primary plan.

Tim
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Electronic design, from concept to prototype.
Bringing a project to life?  Send me a message!
 
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Offline HackedFridgeMagnet

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #8 on: July 01, 2024, 06:13:51 am »
I don't do this anymore but when i did.

for any job that's not straight forward.
time and materials including the time to source the materials.
I was happy to give a rough estimate.
If clients wanted a fixed price quote I would super highball it and hope it doesn't happen.
from memory i had 3 different hourly rates, depending on how much i liked the client.

 
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Offline Geoff-AU

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #9 on: July 01, 2024, 06:40:35 am »
The more competent you are the higher your hourly rate.

Doubles as an excellent filter.
 
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Online woody

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #10 on: July 01, 2024, 07:11:44 am »
Every now and then I fix things. Mostly older electronics that control equipment, hardly ever with the schematics available. Often there are no replacement boards or these are priced prohibitively.

I nearly always attempt these repairs on a 'no cure, no pay' basis. But if cured, I charge by the hour, which means there might be a stiff bill in cases where I need more time to fix an unknown board. This also means I sometimes do not get payed if I fail to repair something. But I recon I always learn from this, which is a form of payment. And I get pretty good in recognizing what I can and cannot repair.

My clients seem to like this way of operating as I never get questions about it. And they return  :)
 
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Online voltsandjolts

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #11 on: July 01, 2024, 09:10:04 am »
Repairing different equipment on each repair job is time consuming, especially as woody says when there are no schematics available. If you are working from home with less overheads then it's easier to take on such work, but if you have a commercial workshop then you really need to be charging by the hour, regardless of end result. Overheads don't go on hold while you're reverse engineering a tricky schematic.

If you can find a device that has a high cost for new item and has a common failure mode, then it's like finding a seam of gold. Then you charge fixed cost for repair rather than per hour, because it takes you 20mins. A friend made good money repairing mitsubushi engine ECUs back in the '90s.
 
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Online woody

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #12 on: July 01, 2024, 10:12:23 am »
If you can find a device that has a high cost for new item and has a common failure mode, then it's like finding a seam of gold.
Exactly this. I find that this makes up for losses I might incur on unfix-able stuff. As for overheads, for me repair is a way of utilizing my workshop when I am done with other jobs, but if you have a repair-only shop this might not fly, I don't know.
 
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Offline SteveThackeryTopic starter

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #13 on: July 01, 2024, 10:38:43 am »
If you are working from home with less overheads then it's easier to take on such work, but if you have a commercial workshop then you really need to be charging by the hour, regardless of end result. Overheads don't go on hold while you're reverse engineering a tricky schematic.

Understood. But why is that the customer's problem? As I've said before: the customer doesn't care about your overheads - they care about getting their appliance fixed. The customer assumes that you charge enough to cover your costs and salary, but they don't need or want to know about the details. They don't care whether you pay rent or own the place.

The problem with charging by the hour is that it looks to the customer like an open-ended money-making racket. The key issue here is that the risk is all on the customer, not shared between the two of you. You can sit back and take your time, or you can work quickly, secure in the knowledge that you will take home $200 for every hour spent.  Even hours spent reading the newspaper. The customer has no such security - they know you can charge whatever you like (they have no idea how long it really took you).

That's why, from the customer's point of view, a firm quotation with no fix/no fee is the only fair billing model.

I don't do electronics repairs - I'm a horologist who does repairs clocks and watches. I have two billing models.  A lot of my work comes from another clock repairer who prefers to work on larger items like longcase (grandfather) clocks, so he sends me the smaller stuff. He pays me £250 per clock to restore the clock to good working order, and that doesn't vary regardless of what needs doing. So sometimes I might spend a couple of hours on a clock, other times In might spend a couple of days. (Those are the extremes.) The advantage to him is that he knows exactly what he'll be paying me for each clock. The advantage to me is that I don't need to mess about doing quotes or estimates. If I find that I'm not making enough money overall then I will negotiate a higher price per clock.

That model is for trade work.  For my own customers I will either give a firm quote when they bring it to me, or examine it and ring them back with a quote. At that point they can say either 'yes' or 'no'. If they say yes, then they get a no fix/no fee deal.

Occasionally I discover a problem that requires an expensive new part. I then decide whether to eat the cost myself or pass it on.  If it's too much I ring the customer and explain their two options: 1/ they can pay the extra and the work will continue; or 2/ they can have the clock back unrepaired and pay nothing (the no fix/no fee part of the deal).

To me that seems to be the only fair way of dealing with customers. They don't know my hourly rate, they don't know what overheads I have, they don't even know if I have staff working for me.  And that's how it should be: the only thing they care about is how much it'll cost to repair their appliance. And then they can say 'yes' or 'no'.

Can you imagine walking into a corner shop and asking "How much is that can of soup?". And the shopkeeper says "Well, because of my overheads I need to make $200 per hour, plus the wholesale cost of the soup, so wait here while I fetch it and we'll see how long it takes me."  It would be absurd, but that is what we do to our customers.
 

Offline Haenk

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #14 on: July 01, 2024, 11:00:52 am »
These issues are all due to the broken business model repairers use.

In automotive repairs (manufacturers workshops), there are fixed repair costs. Every possible repair has a standardized repair time, timed in minutes or fractions of an hour, resulting in standardized repair costs. So it is in the best interest of the workshop, to have their mechanics well trained and acting fast. If a 2 hour job is done in 1:45 that's free 15 minutes of working time for the shop (the mechanic probably gets a bonus for working faster than expected).

Unfortunately, this method only works for high value items. I can't see any possibility to do "budget repairs" on low value items, like most electronics. Fixing things is a luxury thing now. In fact so much so, some governments are now subsidizing repair costs of household items, as most items are (technically) easily fixable, but it is just too expensive, a new item will likely even be cheaper.
 
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Online voltsandjolts

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #15 on: July 01, 2024, 11:24:59 am »
In automotive repairs (manufacturers workshops), there are fixed repair costs.

IME they only provide fixed cost quotes when they have high confidence in the estimated costs of doing the work. Go to the garage with intermittent type problems and you'll be paying hourly for them to try and find the fault.
 
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Offline m k

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #16 on: July 01, 2024, 03:13:30 pm »
I've done fixed price stuff.
Those were Verifone card terminals, so plenty.
But even there I didn't have an obligation to fix them all.
That was modem era, so lightning was also there.
Don't know how beer over terminal is nowadays.
Advance-Aneng-Appa-AVO-Beckman-Danbridge-Data Tech-Fluke-General Radio-H. W. Sullivan-Heathkit-HP-Kaise-Kyoritsu-Leeds & Northrup-Mastech-OR-X-REO-Simpson-Sinclair-Tektronix-Tokyo Rikosha-Topward-Triplett-Tritron-YFE
(plus lesser brands from the work shop of the world)
 
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Offline SteveThackeryTopic starter

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #17 on: July 01, 2024, 04:53:22 pm »

In automotive repairs (manufacturers workshops), there are fixed repair costs. Every possible repair has a standardized repair time, timed in minutes or fractions of an hour, resulting in standardized repair costs. So it is in the best interest of the workshop, to have their mechanics well trained and acting fast. If a 2 hour job is done in 1:45 that's free 15 minutes of working time for the shop (the mechanic probably gets a bonus for working faster than expected).


This is an interesting example. The manufacturer (usually) determines a certain time to do each job, and the dealer is obliged to charge that many hours labour to the customer. Because the hourly rate is known up-front, the customer gets a firm quotation which they can take or leave, and the dealer gets a fair price for the job.  "Cam belt change: 3 hours x $200 per hour = $600", and so on.

Best of both worlds?  Only if the repairer is able to categorise the job up-front, which for electronics gear is more difficult than for a car. 

Electronics repairers could do what I do for trade clock repairs: just charge a fixed price regardless of the actual fault, and make sure that fixed price is high enough to generate the required income.  Oh, and of course it has to be no fix/no fee - that is only fair.
 

Offline janoc

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #18 on: July 01, 2024, 05:20:38 pm »
Electronics repairers could do what I do for trade clock repairs: just charge a fixed price regardless of the actual fault, and make sure that fixed price is high enough to generate the required income.  Oh, and of course it has to be no fix/no fee - that is only fair.

Sure they could. Then you would receive a 4 figures quote for everything because when you turn up with an (to me) unknown device at my desk, I can't know if that fault will take 20 minutes or 20 hours of work to fix.  Or you will get a quote for e.g. 2 hours of work - and if it can't be fixed in those 2 hours, too bad for you. Either it won't be fixed and you get your device still broken back - or you will have to pay more for me to continue working on it. It is only fair. I am not a charity but a business. My bills won't pay themselves only because you think it isn't fair.

Fixed price works only when the scope of the work is well known ahead of time - such as for those auto mechanics when doing standardized repairs. When a customer comes asking for a tire swap or oil change, you know how much effort is that normally going to be, so it is easy to give a fixed quote. But even there you typically pay an hourly rate + cost of parts and consumables (oil, etc.), just the time how long the task should take is often prescribed by the manufacturer of the vehicle.

If the problem is open ended and has to be identified first (which most electronic repairs are), good luck. But feel free to open an electronics repair shop working with fixed prices if you think this is economically workable.  :-//
 
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Offline watchmaker

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #19 on: July 01, 2024, 05:26:41 pm »
My business experience is timepieces, not electronics.  I think there is a distinction because there is a greater diversity in electronics than there is in timepieces.  Even watches 200 years old operate on the same principles as a Rolex.

I charge by the job with the caveat of needed parts that may not become obvious until after the cleaning process (hole jewels, etc).  But I have a very specific niche:  aircraft clocks (about 10 models), marine chronometers (3 real variants), and railroad watches.

After 40 years, I have a pretty good idea what to expect.  My charges are known to the customer up front.  They are not the cheapest, but it has always seemed to yield a competitive advantage.

Psychologically, this makes me want to go the extra mile in terms of "no charge" corrections and wanting to do my best for the customer.  It seems watchmakers who charge by the hour tend to want to rush the current job to get to the next, which results in cut corners.

However, in reality my fixed charges are calculated in the usual business manner:  what I want for an hourly rate, materials (cleaning solutions, lubricants), amortized equipment, and other overhead.  My hourly rate includes the value of my education and experience.

My caveat on parts includes the possibility of corrections due to major vandalism.  My end result is a timepiece that meets or exceeds its standards for precision when it was manufactured. (A 1910 railroad watch exceeded the factory tolerance for modern Rolex). I make minor corrections and aesthetic corrections (polishing steel work and reblueing screws) at no additional charge.

In electronics troubleshooting is much more complicated.  There are significant variations across everything from amplifies to oscilloscopes.  But I suspect those in the business of electronic repair also create a niche where they restrict the universe of devices they service.  But even so, given the many different ways a device can fail, I cannot see how fixed charges would be a sustainable practice.

How would a fixed rate apply to a DOA that is a blown fuse vs blown regulator?  I would think estimates are the best option with charging fairly if it turns out to be a blown fuse.  Surprising how well honesty gets around.
Regards,

Dewey
 
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Online woody

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #20 on: July 01, 2024, 05:38:42 pm »
Electronics repairers could do what I do for trade clock repairs: just charge a fixed price regardless of the actual fault, and make sure that fixed price is high enough to generate the required income.  Oh, and of course it has to be no fix/no fee - that is only fair.
Yeah, I could. Only the wildly varying stuff I get on my desk, usually without any schematic, makes that I won't. Sometimes a repair literally costs me two minutes and some solder but other times it costs me hours of tinkering and multiple orders at Farnell et al.

It might be that a clock is a clock and repair often looks the same but this is not the case with the things I get my hands on. The farthest I will go is no cure no pay, where my experience (hopefully) tells me when to stop trying to breathe life into a device that has emitted its final magic smoke. And if I fix something hours are billed. If I get similar hardware with the same problem I set a fixed price. Which has not necessarily a relation to the number of hours I then spend on the thing.

This means I never have to replace a blown diode in a dime a dozen wall wart for next to nothing but I do replace the same diode in a specialist joystick for the price of a decent smartphone. It works for me and it seems to work for my clients.
 
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Offline Sensorcat

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #21 on: July 01, 2024, 08:30:49 pm »
In automotive repairs (manufacturers workshops), there are fixed repair costs. Every possible repair has a standardized repair time, timed in minutes or fractions of an hour, resulting in standardized repair costs. So it is in the best interest of the workshop, to have their mechanics well trained and acting fast. If a 2 hour job is done in 1:45 that's free 15 minutes of working time for the shop (the mechanic probably gets a bonus for working faster than expected).
That's true, but it implies that diagnosis is not a big issue. If it is, the usual procedure of all workshops, even the manufacturers', is to replace parts until the problem is fixed. The customer pays for all tries and all parts in this case.
 
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Offline SteveThackeryTopic starter

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #22 on: July 01, 2024, 08:50:24 pm »

Sure they could. Then you would receive a 4 figures quote for everything because when you turn up with an (to me) unknown device at my desk, I can't know if that fault will take 20 minutes or 20 hours of work to fix.  Or you will get a quote for e.g. 2 hours of work - and if it can't be fixed in those 2 hours, too bad for you. Either it won't be fixed and you get your device still broken back - or you will have to pay more for me to continue working on it. It is only fair. I am not a charity but a business. My bills won't pay themselves only because you think it isn't fair.


Fair comment, but I think you are choosing extreme examples to make your point.  You definitely wouldn't (and I don't) quote a four-figure number for every job, just because it MIGHT take 20 hours.  The reality is that 20-hour repairs are extremely rare.  So are 2 minutes repairs. You work on averages, such that most weeks you make the right money, occasionally a bit more, occasionally a bit less.


Fixed price works only when the scope of the work is well known ahead of time - such as for those auto mechanics when doing standardized repairs. When a customer comes asking for a tire swap or oil change, you know how much effort is that normally going to be, so it is easy to give a fixed quote. But even there you typically pay an hourly rate + cost of parts and consumables (oil, etc.), just the time how long the task should take is often prescribed by the manufacturer of the vehicle.

If the problem is open ended and has to be identified first (which most electronic repairs are), good luck. But feel free to open an electronics repair shop working with fixed prices if you think this is economically workable.  :-//


Yes, I agree with that. Using myself as an example, clocks and watches have far fewer failure modes than electronics.  My aim was to point to a different business model which (arguably) seems fairer to the customer.

So far nobody has addressed the three fundamental problems with charging by the hour.  1/ It encourages you to work slowly in order to charge the customer more money.*  2/ The less competent the repairer the more money they charge per job because it takes them longer.  This is the wrong way round.  3/ There's a mismatch between what the customer wants to buy (a repair) and what you are willing to sell (your time). And that's what leads to the most unfair practice of all: charging a customer a goodly sum and sending them home with an appliance that's still broken. There's an expression for that: a rip-off. Or maybe daylight robbery. You get the idea.

(*) Let's be honest, we've all eked out a job, even if only semi-deliberately. It's 4.30pm, it's been a long day, and you don't want to start the next job so late in the day.  So you fiddle about doing some gentle make-work - resoldering all the soldered joints, pushing a cloth behind all the buttons to clean the dust out, etc - anything nice and easy to take you up to 5pm. And of course you charge the customer to 5pm, even though they've bought half an hour of make-work.

Personally I don't know the answer. In fact I don't believe there is a single answer to the fundamental conflict: the customer wants to buy a repair, you want to sell your time.  There are only compromises.

Whatever charging model you use, the one line in the sand I believe we should all observe is: no fix/no fee. It's just not right morally to charge the customer $200, thank you very much, and send them home with a still broken appliance. It's just so colossally unfair to them, and they have absolutely no redress.  If you aren't competent enough to fix the appliance, you should not be rewarded for failing.  What other business rewards incompetence and failure?
 

Offline starphot

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Re: Charging by the hour is unfair!
« Reply #23 on: July 01, 2024, 09:01:28 pm »
I'm a retired electronics repair tech. I've been out of the repair business for quite awhile. My shop was for a Fortune 500 electronics retailer and we had fixed repair rates depending on item with about a dozen brands under approved warranty service. I was on commission and I repaired over 32,000 analog cellphones and accessories plus other RF comm gear in my career.  I made plenty as some units took only minutes until I was laid off in 2001. Depending on volume of repair unis doing the fixed rates vs hourly has its own advantages. Low volume repairs usually do the hourly in an independent shop, but don't abuse the hourly if you want referrals from your customers!
« Last Edit: July 01, 2024, 09:05:11 pm by starphot »
Analog-Digital
 
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Offline shabaz

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If someone is getting $200 bills unexpectedly, then that's a contractual problem, or the product to be repaired was taken to an unreputable place, or, perhaps, the customer did not look at the contractual terms or chose to ignore them anyway (non-expert customers might misunderstand how difficult a diagnosis or repair task may be).

It's not possible to force someone to find the root cause within a couple of hours, or to repair something within a certain timeframe, because, very practically, it might not be possible or economically viable for the engineer to achieve it.

That's why the world works with contract terms. One gets to decide if they are willing to proceed based on the contract, and if either side feels they didn't get what was contracted for, then there are practical solutions for that (like courts).

It's moral to charge a 'reasonable amount' for spending time diagnosing an issue, and it's very moral for engineers to let their customers know at some point if it's looking like it might not be possible to repair, so that the customer can make the decision if they wish to spend more money proceeding further, or not.

Regarding deliberately working slower when you know you're getting paid by the hour, this is not normal, but I can imagine some firms might have the odd engineer like that, bad company culture, etc. Hopefully they don't last long due to word of mouth, trustpilot type sites, etc.
 
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