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From experience, do you think there is a market, for offering after 6pm calls? For example, do you get requests for such unspeakable appointments?
Yes, but getting employed engineers to wear it or to work a shift pattern without considerable renumeration is another thing entirely.
K.
Re: After 6pm calls
Kwatt, in your opinion, would it be fair, to increase the labour charge, for such an appointment?
Re: After 6pm calls
As a one man band in my area, I dont get much choice. If I dont do them someone else will. I find that the customers who want an after 6 appointment are usually proffesional people who can’t or wont take the time off work, but if they want anything after 5pm from me it does cost them an extra £25.00. most are ok with this. I tend to book late appointments only on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I find most customers will wait if they have to for the late appointment.
Toni
Re: After 6pm calls
I seem to remember this is a whirlpool thing, at one time they also wanted to have call centres open to 8pm, that will be achieved I suppose when they shift to D&G answering for them.
After 6PM, forget it, for an engineer who starts at 0730 with 10 calls finished by 3.30. We now wont book an after 3.30 call.
Of course if you agree to an after 6pm for a customer, they will always demand it, as Ariston found out when years ago stating an engineer as part of his week had to do an (yes 1 ) after 5pm call. Total failure as far as engineers concerned but extremely popular with the customer.
KevinRe: After 6pm calls
Doing calls after 6pm I reckon is just as bad as those the advertise “No Call Out Fee”. True enough there’s always some firm or individual that will do such things and you may well lose the job if you don’t but so what :con:
I do my best to inform my customer when I am available to call and fix their machine between 9am and 4pm for 6 days of the week. And in 99{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of calls I get, that suits them, the other 1{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} can do what the hell they like…their choice, I don’t need them 👿
Martin
Re: After 6pm calls
I’m in the same situation as Toni. I live in a low population area so can’t afford to pick and choose what jobs to take on. The unsociable hours part of the job I hate most is answering customer phone calls at 9.30 on a Sunday night. 😡
Re: After 6pm calls
I don’t think that there is a fair rate for it Paul, or at least not one that we would get paid. If you consider almost any “emergency service” that does this such as plumbers the rates for out of hours service are extremely high by comparison to having work carried out within normal working hours. But the comparison is being drawn between a house worth thousands and a domestic appliance worth a few hundred quid.
The same thing happens in the car industry to some extent, whilst you can have a car towed to the garage at 6pm you will not have it looked at till (at best) the following day and you’ll still pay more than an appliance engineer would charge just for the repair let alone the cost of having it taken in. Now we are expected to go to the customer, at their convience entirely, repair the appliance regardless of whether it takes two minutes or two hours and charge far less for that service. Which one do you think is more costly to provide?
So, around here, an franchised garage will charge you about £55 an hour labour and a plumber about the same to call then £30-50 an hour thereafter, so let’s say you get a call booked for after 6pm and the job takes an hour, plus travelling to it etc., what’s a fair rate? by fair I mean fair on the customer in relation to the cost of the goods and what’s a fair rate for the engineer who is losing his personal time?
IMO, there’s no easy answer to it.
Many years ago Currys instigated a out of hours service through Zanussi, we’re talking in the late 80’s here, where the customer would be offered an after 5pm appointment for an additional £20 whether the appliance was under warranty or not. Now, remember we’re talking almost twenty years ago so that would probably equate to roughly £30-35 in real terms to today’s money. We had over 10 seervice engineers who did not want these calls, not one of them and we passed the charge directly to the engineers and took no profit from it at all. Even at that they simply didn’t want to know about it at all.
I’ve seen a few such things come and go and they’re fine for a sole trader as you have more flexibility but where you employ and have employees with a contract of employment it is very hard to change that without a major upset. And possibly at considerable cost, especially if one or two of the engineers take the hump and leave and, in the current climate, they would likely not find it diffiicult to gain alternative employment.
Why work for me for ~£18K when you can get paid more from BG for the same crap?
So would I offer it, no. Not without very serious consideration and considerable recompense.
K.
Re: After 6pm calls
Toni wrote:As a one man band in my area, I dont get much choice. If I dont do them someone else will. I find that the customers who want an after 6 appointment are usually proffesional people who can’t or wont take the time off work, but if they want anything after 5pm from me it does cost them an extra £25.00. most are ok with this. I tend to book late appointments only on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I find most customers will wait if they have to for the late appointment.
Toni
Thanks, that’s similar to what I had in mind, once i’m without contract.
Re: After 6pm calls
Phidom wrote:I’m in the same situation as Toni. I live in a low population area so can’t afford to pick and choose what jobs to take on.
Doing work ‘out of office hours’ is so very unnecessary for either of you to commit yourselves doing and can easily be avoided. But I understand the point about not risking losing the job to those that do. But guys, by doing so you are entering ‘cowboy country’ by taking them on.
Tell them it cost extra for out of hours calls and they will soon make alternative arrangements to suit you, not them. Give anybody an inch and they will take a mile as well you know, and they will not want to pay any more for it either….
Toni wrote:I find that the customers who want an after 6 appointment are usually proffesional people
Professional eh?….Well make sure you charge “professional extra rate” rate then 😆
Martin
Re: After 6pm calls
You guys are still stuck in the 70’s. The world has changed, if you dont adapt to it you will loose the customers, not nessesaryily to a competitor, more likely to a shed that will flog em a new crapo machine and happily deliver out of hours. Customers just wont stay in or take days off, yes we all hate that attitude, (I personaly would give anything for a day at home) but if you want the bussiness you have to do it.
Back in the days I actually had some staff, i employed some engineers 8-5 and one 10-7, suited him as he couldnt get out of bed anyway and suited me at the time.
The problem with After 6’s and the like is that, although they are expecting you, they will not adapt their routine so you are generally rolling around their kitchen floor while they are preparing dinner whatever or even using that cooker you have come to fix.
Obviously you can only take a small number of A6’s so the price has to rise.Re: After 6pm calls
Sorry Mark, we are not stuck in the 70’s and we have adapted. We won’t do after 3.30 in the afternoon, instead we do 0730 calls which our customers prefer.
Most find it easier to go into work an hour late than take afternoon time off. I have two engineers that have 3 calls each completed by 0930 (or parts ordered), the number of calls we lose is 1{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} and lets face it they then become some else’s problem, we even refuse all contract customers out of hours calls, no probs at all.
My engineers have a life too, and as the summer comes with longer daylight hours I’m sure they will appreciate the stand their company takes.
KevinRe: After 6pm calls
Its very topographical as we cover a town in Suffolk that the people are always at, or will stay at home whenever we suggest a day, while here, and south of here that is defo not the case. My one remaining engineeer does start at 7.30 as Kevin suggests but with school runs its impossible to do many calls before 9-9.30. I personaly dont mind doing the late stuff myself.
Like it or not, customers expect Tesco to be open at 11pm and a service engineer to call when they are in.
I think we would loose 30{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of calls if we didnt book A4’s and maybe 10-15{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} if we turned down A5’s After 6’s would only be one a day anyway.Re: After 6pm calls
Kevin Wrote:
Sorry Mark, we are not stuck in the 70’s and we have adapted. We won’t do after 3.30 in the afternoon, instead we do 0730 calls which our customers prefer.
Sorry, but that sounds like exactly the same as when I left school and sat alongside a Hotpoint engineer in 1978. How is that adapting to customers needs in any way?
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