Electronics > Repair
Charging by the hour is unfair!
David_AVD:
I charge an upfront fee for almost all items brought in for repair. Before booking it in and charging the fee however I'll advise the customer what the likely total could be as a range. The upfront fee is deducted from the total repair total.
If I highly suspect that it's not going to be a viable repair I'll just tell them right then and there. People who rip customers off won't last in business.
My customers know the minimum cost involved and are free not to proceed booking it in. We also discuss what limit I should keep in mind as I work on their item and contact them if things look like going off course. I do get the occasional customer take their item back without booking it in and I'm fine with that.
Occasionally I'll spend hours and some parts on an attempted repair only to call it quits. I still get my minimum fee and 99% of customers are totally fine with this. I've actually had a few customers offer some extra money at that point as they appreciated the efforts I made even though I couldn't fix their item.
Very occasionally I get someone ask for a free quote. I simply tell them that's not how I work and they go elsewhere. Well, I suspect they get the same answer everywhere else and end up complaining to their friends how unjust the world is.
David_AVD:
--- Quote from: SteveThackery on July 01, 2024, 10:38:43 am ---I don't do electronics repairs - I'm a horologist who does repairs clocks and watches.
--- End quote ---
Just out of interest, do you work from home or in a rented workshop? Also, what sort of money would you have invested in spare parts (on hand), tools, etc?
CaptDon:
Please remember some customers try to fix it themselves and cause the item to often become un-repairable!!! My father had a Radio / T.V. repair shop for over 30 years. for about the last decade of his business he charged $25.00 up front as an estimate fee. If you decided to repair the item after getting the estimate the $25.00 was credited to the repair charge. Often the customer said don't bother fixing it and the shop got a "parts buggy" to harvest a good used C.R.T. or expensive transformer and other parts from. Dad often told a customer "With new parts a C.R.T. replacement and convergence will run around $150.00 to $180.00 but we have a good used C.R.T. available with a 1 year warranty and could do the job for around $90.00 These 'hard parts' often came from T.V.'s that had suffered lightning damage. As for an estimate, it is often the case that the item must be fully repaired and burned in for a day to make sure nothing else is wrong. So you now have parts and labor tied up and may only see the estimate fee. If the customer decided the repair was too costly and said "just keep it, don't fix it", well, it was already fixed so he would put the item up for sale usually for what was owed on the repair bill. He harvested tons of repair parts from "just keep it" microwave ovens. Some of the parts harvested were obsolete by the O.E.M. and unavailable but Dad could still do the repair when no one else could!!
m k:
I've also done stuff for company internals, there the main indicator was lead time.
Around y2k computer things were pretty easy, but things became old pretty fast.
After ATX mobos came the CPU box situation changed, and small companies were a bit lost with "constant" change.
Here things were also more expensive back then.
Industrial stuff is different.
So it's much of what kind of a customer is paying.
Individual or a company, and what kind of a company.
Here cost estimation for individual customers is mandatory.
Old saying is that the price is not the work but the know how.
It kicks back if you don't know.
Working slower has two sides, doing it too slow and not too fast.
It's that you never have time to do it right, but you always have time to fix it.
m k:
For private electronics repairer, needed tools are not a major thing.
Average salary x2 for semi pro, other x2 if it's for living.
It's a bit high, "1/5 is yours" is one kind of a rule of thumb here.
E,
Last comma includes too much silent info.
Private who is selling mainly work hours from good location can quite easily change that 1/5 to 4/5.
But still, percentages wont pay bills.
Bigger circles may have a situation of 6th, 1/6 of work force is mainly elsewhere.
And overall 1/10 is not so business anymore.
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