Electronics > Repair
Charging by the hour is unfair!
<< < (35/40) > >>
SteveThackery:

--- Quote from: SteveThackery on July 07, 2024, 05:43:28 pm ---The repairer is left with a clock they've just spent four hours on and which might fetch a hundred bucks on eBay if they are lucky.

--- End quote ---

Another nasty little trick the clients do: they will claim that some sort of pre-existing damage wasn't there when they dropped the clock off.  I don't know if they genuinely believe it or just fancy getting some money back  The only solution is to photograph the item I detail while they are watching, with your camera set to overlay the date and time on each picture.

Anyway, drifting off topic a bit!
Simon:

--- Quote from: SteveThackery 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?

--- End quote ---

If only the repair was an item in the spare catalogue......
fzabkar:

--- Quote from: SteveThackery on July 07, 2024, 05:43:28 pm ---Perhaps you could campaign to introduce better business practices in your country.😄

--- End quote ---

Louis Rossmann is already doing that. It's called "Right to Repair". Unfortunately US politicians on both sides are in the pockets of Big Business, so any legislation is routinely undermined. In fact, you can see the vast cultural difference between the EU and USA just in the levels of the fines handed down against big players such as Apple and Google. EU fines target the revenue of these companies, whereas FTC fines are written off as minor annoyances.
PlainName:

--- Quote from: coromonadalix on July 07, 2024, 04:34:01 pm ---
--- Quote from: PlainName on July 07, 2024, 09:11:57 am ---
--- Quote from: coromonadalix on July 07, 2024, 07:20:10 am ---6 pages already ...   :palm:

--- End quote ---

Has Dave implemented some test, based on the contents of this thread, which you have to complete before you can read a different thread? Or can you still just shrug and ignore the entire thing if it's not to your liking?

--- End quote ---

i would reply   it is becoming very sad here  to see many threads derailing that way ... and  i say many     until a mod is called  to shut them down

--- End quote ---

If you don't like it, don't contribute. Then if no-one does it will die a death on its own. Problem solved.

What you mean is the discussion - on topic, off topic, whatever it is or wherever it goes - is not to your liking. Clearly, other users are participating for whatever reasons of their own. The solution: just ignore it. Problem solved.


--- Quote ---he pay by hour .......    is not how it works in majority NOW, not happy, do it your self,  or go elsewhere,  if you work by tariff   it's plug and play parts and voila ... but to do so, you did work hours and establish your tarifs rates  .... SIMPLE AS THAT
--- End quote ---

See - the problem is that your view hasn't been accepted in its entirety by everyone, and that's why you are peeved. It it was 7 pages of agreeing with you you'd think very differently!

There are threads on this board that I don't look at once I've seen what they are and where they will go. I don't miss them. I don't demand they're locked because they're too dumb for me to follow.

Long threads are not themselves an issue. Looke at TEA. The issue is simply what you get out of it, not what other people do. Just ignore the thread. Please.
PlainName:

--- Quote ---Another nasty little trick the clients do: they will claim that some sort of pre-existing damage wasn't there when they dropped the clock off.
--- End quote ---

Maybe they do, but it is very similar to when I take my car to be serviced: when I get it back, perhaps a day or week later something goes wrong. Did they break it so I'd have to go back to them? It seems very coincidental, and the temptation is to think it is something they did.

Actually, once it was them (a breather not put back right, and it took me several weeks to realise the issue was real and take it back). But I try not to think  badly of them now, even though another time they didn't reset the service light and I had to take it back for that.

And indeed, last time there was an engine light fault. Amazingly it started the evening before I was to take the car in for a service, so just a day different and I'd have automatically thought they'd done something when I got it back and it started showing the fault.

Anyway, I mention this just to say that I am sure that often the client is not doing it deliberately or as a trick, but as a normal human reaction to coincidence. Of course, there will be some that are actual toerags, but I think they would be outliers.
Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod