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I am so busy I am trying to give work away SO I ‘phone a local independant to see if he is interested. I am told that he is out working 7 days a week and thanks but can’t cope with any more.
Then I see he is advertising on a free ads type site offering free call outs and fixed price repairs for under £39 + parts.
My charges are fixed at £59 + parts.
I just don’t get why you would want to work for so little and be working 7 days but not want any more work. I understand it may be a new business and he is trying to build a customer base BUT I just don’t get it!
At £59 I have an excellent reputation for doing a good job at a fair price. I wonder how you all arrive at your prices …….?
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
I suppose the pricing is relative to the area and the clientel affordability.
George
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
have a maximum capped call out and repair £, and discretionary reduction to min of £25+vat, depending on niceness, easiness and closeness.
but have been known to cut labour right down to cover basic costs, i.e travel/insurance, if repair gets really expensive and machine is under 3yrs and came from me initially.
gotta do this because we have a semi-retired ex-comet/bosch engineer working on our doorstep who isnt vat reg’d for £25 repairs+parts. he manages to cherry pick most the easy jobs (elelements, filters, door hinges etc) and declines anything £25 labour will be too cheap for. bit annoying as he isnt willing to do the tougher tasks, but at least i guess its better that he refers those customers to us, rather than manufacturers engineers.
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
Think I might know who you’re referring to :).
The reason why I work seven days a week is because I love the job – finding and solving faults – and because in the end I really need the experience, as it’s a steep learning curve being able to recognise the less common faults.
As to why I charge what I do… in the end, I earn much more per hour than my wife, who has a degree. What I’ve found is that for £39 people don’t bother to try and sort faults themselves. Take today: –
Job 1: Hoover not draining frozen outlet pipe.
Job 2: Indesit new pump.
Job 3: Beko – tap turned off at wall.
Job 4: Beko – refit outer door seal spring, which had fallen off.
Job 5: Beko – clear filter.
Job 6: Hoover – clear filter.
Job 7: Bosch – new brushes.
Job 8: Indesit BER bearings – new Amica sale.
Job 9: Hoover – new PCB ordered.
Job 10: Hotpoint WM brushes.Seven jobs were return customers or recommendations. All were – let’s face it – dead simple, apart from 9 where the machine was a PITA to get out. None of them had bothered to go online or even check the filter as they didn’t mind paying £39 to get it sorted.
I’m sure some people think it’s too cheap – but in the end, many of you can sell your experience. I can’t – when I come across a difficult job, it’s sometimes a learning curve for me.
It also means I can pick and choose customers. If a customer is annoying or demanding when they call – I politely tell them I’m not interested in their custom. If a customer is rude when I’m at their house leave. I’m in the lucky situation where I can pick and choose my customers, which I’m very thankful for.
As to your call – thank you for offering to refer customers but quite simply I wouldn’t feel comfortable if you were taking the time to recommend customers to me that I didn’t have time to service. I’ve saved your number and have recommended any fridge, dishwasher etc. work to you – I hope you find this useful :).
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
Chris,
The point I am making is don’t under sell yourself! Have you looked at your costs? How much do you really earn per hour after ALL your costs?
I am not trying to tell you how to run your business and I too love my work, but If customers are happy to pay a manufacture upwards of £80 why would you only value your time at £35?
As for less common faults – there are plenty Chris & there is also plenty of helpful local engineers to call on if you get stuck! And plenty of experience that is readily available.
I was not having a dig at you personaly Chris (Or anyone else) it was a general comment and incidently, in my opinion you ARE vastly undervaluing yourself! you have a great website and you are obviously very conscientious.
Just consider this for a moment…..I have a regular customer who is happy to pay me 59 pounds, but I am too busy, I would love to pass the call on (Maybe motor brushes) I don’t have an independant that will take it – so customer goes to manufacture! THAT breaks my heart!!
Merry Christmas all 😀
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
trotter wrote:Just consider this for a moment…..I have a regular customer who is happy to pay me 59 pounds, but I am too busy, I would love to pass the call on (Maybe motor brushes) I don’t have an independant that will take it – so customer goes to manufacture! THAT breaks my heart!!
Merry Christmas all 😀
Thanks :). As I said, at the moment because (thankfully both of us!) are run off our feet, I wouldn’t feel happy asking you to pass jobs over – although it’s a very kind offer, as you are “recommending” us I wouldn’t feel happy unless I was certain the service could be 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} spot on. I know how annoyed I’d be if I was recommending someone, e.g. sparky, plumber or whatever, and they told one of my customers that they couldn’t fit them in because they were too busy.That said, I’m looking to take on an apprentice in the new year once everything’s calmed down a bit – at that stage I obviously need to sit down and cost everything out properly. In the end, this time last year I was working in hotel management – I’ve HAD to learn a lot over the past year and no doubt getting the pricing right will still require some tweaking.
However, once I have an apprentice set up and have a bit more capacity I’ll certainly give you a call – it’s already been useful to be able to refer out of area work to you, hopefully it should work well for both of us. Thanks for your feedback :).
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
We have someone in our area who offers Free Call out, Free Estimates and obviously he gets a lot of calls due to the fact that there are many folks who like the idea of something Free. Much better to have someone come to your house and work on your appliances for nothing and if its too much the customer is quids in. For instance talking to this person a few days back he was telling me how he has had 18 calls over the last two days, 9 of these were appliances that the customers decided against repairing, taking into account his time, diesel costs, insurances, etc and many of the clients he seems to attract. As for the other 9 calls that he did complete he still has overheads to deduct plus stock from them.
Now why he is making a weekly wage out of this system when you factor the costs in, then deal with Tax it makes you wonder what his real profit margin is versus costs ? Any job that is involved over about 30 mins he tells the customer its beyond repair and not worth fixing, he did not tell me this bit but as we have had customers who have paid him nothing then come to us where we have subsequently made a repair much to the customers surprise the customers then realise why we do charge for our time. I am not saying that anyone here is unprofessional who does not make a charge in the case of a BER appliance thats up to the customers to view but with fuel costs at an all time high you have to wonder at the numbers involved.
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
squadman wrote:We have someone in our area who offers Free Call out, Free Estimates and obviously he gets a lot of calls due to the fact that there are many folks who like the idea of something Free. Much better to have someone come to your house and work on your appliances for nothing and if its too much the customer is quids in. For instance talking to this person a few days back he was telling me how he has had 18 calls over the last two days, 9 of these were appliances that the customers decided against repairing, taking into account his time, diesel costs, insurances, etc and many of the clients he seems to attract. As for the other 9 calls that he did complete he still has overheads to deduct plus stock from them.
Now why he is making a weekly wage out of this system when you factor the costs in, then deal with Tax it makes you wonder what his real profit margin is versus costs ? Any job that is involved over about 30 mins he tells the customer its beyond repair and not worth fixing, he did not tell me this bit but as we have had customers who have paid him nothing then come to us where we have subsequently made a repair much to the customers surprise the customers then realise why we do charge for our time. I am not saying that anyone here is unprofessional who does not make a charge in the case of a BER appliance thats up to the customers to view but with fuel costs at an all time high you have to wonder at the numbers involved.
If I was at 50{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} BER rate I wouldn’t be offering free call-outs either – but let’s face it, any competent engineer is nowhere near that rate.Indeed, I would think there is more incentive to make every effort to repair it if you get nowt otherwise – as we saw, the likes of Clive Bramhall were more than happy to walk in, diagnose a faulty PCB with his one screwdriver, and get out with his £55 call out. A charge for call out may be more common for experienced engineers – but there’s cowboys doing it too.
For me, 90{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of my calls are either repairs, or BER and new machine sales. That means I might get one call a day where they get 30 minutes of my time for free – but then how much extra would I have to spend on advertising to compensate for charging a call-out fee?
It’s clearly different if you’re experienced and have a customer base hence can rely more on repeat, rather than recommendation and new business – but we all have to start somewhere :). If no-one wanted to become washing machine engineers, than God help us in 20 years time when people are throwing away machines for blocked filters!
Im always supprised how cheap you guys are at £25, £39 even £59 inc parts is too cheap in my opinion, I charge £55 exc parts and Im still busy, busy, busy.
My advice would be to increase your prices, I bet you would see no downturn in buisiness.
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
If I was at 50{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} BER rate I wouldn’t be offering free call-outs either – but let’s face it, any competent engineer is nowhere near that rate
I dont think it has much to do with the competence of the engineer, you could be highly competent but find that customers just don’t require the repair once you have diagnosed it. Result No Money, even if two thirds of your calls result in no money changing hands thats a loss whichever way you look at it. We get calls constantly asking if we have a call out charge, what this means is that they are asking us to call to investigate there problem and want that service for nothing, we reason with this people to an extent and it soon becomes clear that there will be nothing in it for us. The result is that we do not take the call, they can carry on using their phone and time until they find someone who is prepared to go out and give them something for free.
Imagine if you rang a customer and asked them to nip down to Tesco’s and get some shopping for you. Of course they would need to use their vehicle and fuel and go at a time to suit you. When they arrive at your house with the shopping you tell them that you have had a look at the shopping and don’t want to pay for it and they can take it back. How many people would be prepared to do that ?
We have in forty years never provided a free call out and after forty years of trading we have a large customer base who book us time and time again. Like others here we are extremely busy and it may be that you have to work in this fashion due to localised issues but as others have said if your a competent service engineer providing a good service and able to repair machines with parts that on average cost £15.00 you are selling your services way to cheap.
However each to their own I wish you luck 🙂
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
squadman wrote:I dont think it has much to do with the competence of the engineer, you could be highly competent but find that customers just don’t require the repair once you have diagnosed it.
Can I just ask a simple question please, I beg your indulgence for a moment even if this goes wildly off-topic and, if it does, one of us will split the thread…
With the collective knowledge on this site, is there any real excuse for a less than competent engineer/repairer?
K.
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
I read this as any competent engineer would have a conversion rate of more than 50{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}. this was being used in the context of percentages of jobs.
No it has nothing to do with competence from that standpoint but in respect of your question kwatt then there is no excuse for a engineer not being competent but is being competent something that others would judge someone to be as opposed to someone thinking that they are competent ?
To Be or not to Be ! that is the question
🙂
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
Having all the Knowledge in the world dosnt make you competent. i have met many people that have all the qualifications and knowledge for their profession, but when it came down to the practical they just wasnt that good!
You can lead the Horse to water but you cant make it drink it!
Re: Busy? I am turning work away
Hmm. Another thought-provoking thread!
I think I have often advised BER where another engineer might have encouraged repair. This is mainly because I’m lazy and I want to get home. Also, I have so often seen second hand machines in perfect condition go for £5 in the local auction, that I tend to place a lower value on a broken machine than it is probably worth to the customer.
Now you may say, I should leave the decision up to the customer and I do, I do! I assure you! But it’s a subconscious thing. However neutral you try to maintain your countenance, your true thoughts and beliefs show through and customers pick up on them.
Mind you this has meant that I don’t have a large stock of unused modules etc., bought in error, because I tend to err on the side of caution and not throw good money after bad.
Mike.Re: Busy? I am turning work away
kwatt wrote:
Can I just ask a simple question please, I beg your indulgence for a moment even if this goes wildly off-topic and, if it does, one of us will split the thread…With the collective knowledge on this site, is there any real excuse for a less than competent engineer/repairer?
K.
Knowledge doesn’t endow competence. You can can have all the information in the world at your fingertips, but if you don’t have the ability to use it properly then it’s useless, possibly dangerous.
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