| Electronics > Repair |
| Charging by the hour is unfair! |
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| CatalinaWOW:
The troll comment may well apply because: You have said you substantially agree with the widely accepted practice of charging an evaluation fee which non-refundable, and substantially agree with attempt to repair with no guarantee of success as long as that is presented ahead of time. Yet you continue to complain. Perhaps you represent the intersection of those who choose not to read a contract before signing with those who don't at least summarize the contract verbally before presenting to the customer. But you appear to be unsatisfied until everyone here says "You are right" You rail about the difference between the results of labor and labor itself. But the difference is fuzzier than you present. The universe is full of broken items. There is a gradient between those broken items that anyone can repair and those that are unrepairable almost regardless of the skill set and resources of the repairer. Technically I don't think there is anything that is unrepairable, given enough resources. An unobtainable chip? Just set up a semiconductor fab for the appropriate technology (including all of the feedstock and everything), reverse engineer the chip and fab it. This would take literally millions of dollars, but doesn't break any physical laws. I believe there is value to the customer in knowing where in that gradient their precious lies, even if the repair is deemed impractical. That is what you are buying, not the hours. It may not be what you intended to buy, but that is a misunderstanding. The blame for that misunderstanding is shared by both parties in the transaction. |
| tooki:
--- Quote from: MK14 on July 05, 2024, 09:33:38 pm --- --- Quote from: tooki on July 05, 2024, 08:54:19 pm ---But not as bizarre as the fact that you think people should work for free... --- End quote --- You can (or use to), encounter such a concept, at least in the UK. Consider a hairdresser. There is the standard charge, for simplicity, lets call it £10(-) .. £15(+) for a haircut, by a standard, experienced/qualified hairdressing professional. The same hairdresser, my occasionally offer reduced prices (or even free), I can't remember exactly, by I think it was something like half-price, or reduced price, as a minimum. If you let the trainee hairdressers, cut your hair. So, a similar concept, could apply, to an upcoming, not yet properly experienced/(qualified if/as necessary)/equipped/etc, repair individual/shop/entity. I suspect the right/better way to do it, is for the repair person/company, to offer such a service (free, unless we succeed in repairing your device), on a case by case basis. I.e. Only with certain types of repair, and certain (trustworthy/suitable) customers, with perhaps other stipulations. E.g. Some faults, by their description, can sound like the repairer, has a reasonable or better idea, as to what is wrong. So, success is likely, and finding out it is unrepairable/uneconomic etc, would be reasonably quick. If it was a PC, an estimation of the parts and repair time, is not too difficult. So for a competent PC repair technician, accepting a free, unless we fix it. Wouldn't sound too bad. But other electronics repair, especially to the individual electronic component level, can be problematic/expensive/risky, as already mentioned by many others, in this thread. But if it is building up, an upcoming repairer's, experience level. Without them needing to pay (possibly lots of money), paying for learning resources (such as actual qualifications). With perhaps significant upfront costs, no guarantee of final success. Possibly needing financial resources, that the person involved, simply doesn't have access to, at the moment (i.e. a sort of chicken and egg situation). Then maybe, it could be a solution. --- End quote --- Years ago, my mom used to sometimes get her hair cut at the local hairdressing school. Haircut practically free, done by a student stylist under the supervision of a teacher, as I understand. Regardless, this thread isn’t about trainees, though. I don’t think anyone would consider it reasonable to charge customers full price for a novice trainee to do the work on their own. Troubleshooting electronics requires a lot of experience, as you know. What is perfectly fair IMHO is for a shop to let a trainee do certain things under the supervision of an expert, but bill only the time it would have taken the expert to do it. Or to draw from a recent experience, a friend had a plumber over to do some work (several distinct things). The plumber came with an apprentice, who did some of the work at the same time the graybeard did others. So even with the “downtime” of the expert explaining things to the apprentice sometimes, in total there were about 1.5 persons worth of work being done. The billing was for the expert plumber only, the apprentice’s work was essentially free. When I first started working as an onsite Mac consultant, for the first month or so, my boss had me tag along to meet all the clients and show me their configurations. (Most of the clients had us come every week or two.) And of course so the boss could get a feel for whether I was good enough to unleash on the clients unsupervised. :P So on the first couple of visits at a given client, they got me there for free. Once I knew the client and their setup well enough, then I would go on my own, or on big jobs, boss and I would both go and then bill for both of us. |
| SteveThackery:
--- Quote from: tooki on July 05, 2024, 10:57:59 pm --- Repeating your delusions one more time won’t make them any less unreasonable than they were the first time around. :horse: --- End quote --- I believe they aren't delusions, I believe them to be valid points. It's a poor way of arguing to resort to terms like "delusions". --- Quote ---You keep missing the point. You're paying for someone to work on your equipment. --- End quote --- No, no, NO! YOU keep missing the point!!. I am NOT paying for "someone to work on my equipment". What possible value or purpose is there in someone "working on it"? I DON'T WANT YOU WORKING ON IT! I WANT YOU FIXING IT!! Why is this so hard for you to understand? --- Quote from: all_repair on July 06, 2024, 12:17:39 am ---Repairer is not god, they are more like Doctor or lawyer. Talk "no fix no fee" to them, --- End quote --- Bad analogy. There are entire companies of accident claim lawyers who work on a "no win no fee basis". It's a normal business model. --- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on July 06, 2024, 04:37:28 am ---The troll comment may well apply because: --- End quote --- Stop calling me a troll. Insulting each other has no place in a polite discussion. I believe my argument to be completely valid. You believe your argument to be completely valid. I believe you are totally wrong, and actually immoral in the way you conduct your business. You believe it's OK for a customer to pay for a non-repair, I believe it's not OK. You believe I am totally wrong and some kind of a nutter for suggesting a technician might have to do some work without pay. I believe you are equally nuts to suggest a customer should have to pay for nothing. You clearly have a very low opinion of me. I won't tell you what I think if you because I'm polite. We are clearly at an impasse, so there is no point in continuing. However, I would like to thank everyone who has engaged in the debate constructively. It's a shame one or two didn't, but I guess any group of people has one or two disagreeable members. |
| fmashockie:
There's too much to try and quote from you SteveThackery, but Idk how someone who has been on this earth for at least 45 years (you said you've worked on watches that long) doesn't understand this concept. Even after it has been explained to you by people who are in the business. Which is why I assume you are a troll because you seem to lack an understanding of how the world works (whether intentionally or you are just that niave at say ~50-60 yrs old?). I assume you think when you buy a perscription drug, an artpiece, or anything for that matter, you are just buying the phsyical object that is in front of you? Well you are not. All that is factored into that price is time spent, the labor, the materials, the R&D. It is no different for someone offering a repair service. It doesn't matter what you think you are paying for, that IS what you are paying for; the time spent working on it; the materials put into it; the knowledge/expertise/wisdom used to diagnose it. That is what you are paying for in reality. It doesn't matter what you think you are paying for in your head. |
| SteveThackery:
Thanks for your considered reply, @fmashockie. I just want to check how the following scenario works in your mind. I am a bit rubbish at electronics. I have relatively little experience or training. I try to fix things, but I really struggle if I can't find a circuit diagram. Several times I have come across a complex electronic product, and my lack of experience means I cannot identify what each part of a circuit board actually does. I often have to give up on a repair because I just can't work out what is wrong with it. Nevertheless, I rather like the idea of making a living by repairing electronic products. I know I'll do well because I can charge $200 per hour no matter how long it takes me, and I can even charge the same labour rate if I fail to find and fix the fault. So I set myself up as an electronics repair shop. @fmashocie, would you bring a device for me to repair? I doubt it, because you know about electronics and you've read my confession above. How comfortable are you that other people - unsuspecting people - are bringing me stuff to repair, and being charged the same hourly rate as you? Wouldn't you want to warn them against using me? But everything that has been said in this thread implies that I should be allowed to carry on. Me charging $200 per hour is completely fine because you think I should never work for free, even when I'm out of my depth. All I'm expected to do is "work on" the product for that time, even If I'm just poking around with a scope probe and hoping for the best. Is that really OK? I know that you will say "That bloke will soon go out of business", but customers rarely know when they've been ripped off because they weren't able to fix it either. Are you comfortable with me setting up shop a couple of doors away from you and being a competitor? You might say market forces will sort things out, but that can take a long time. I'm putting this argument because it gives an illustration of what is wrong with your preferred business model. According to that model, all labour is valuable and must be paid for, no matter what. No matter how long he takes to do a simple job, and no matter how often he returns an unrepaired item. But honestly, would you REALLY support that guy? I'm just trying to illustrate how questionable your argument is - it takes no account of the real skills a repairer might be offering. |
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