‘No Call Out Charge’ beware!!!

[kwatt]

If you really have to enter that arena my suggestion was this to many old customers…

Free estimate on repairs over £XXX

Where XXX will generally be £100. This means that the customer gets a free estimate if it is an espensive repair but up to the £100 you either get the job, which is highly likely, or you get a callout fee which you can explain.

It’s clear, it’s simple and it is within the legal framework if presented correctly.

Most of the guys that adopted such a system or charged a nominal fee as a callout found that all it did was filter out a lot of the cr@p calls they were getting from customers wanting the job done for nothing. The high cost ones, well you takes your chance but it’s a better one than running around the countryside for nothing all the time.

K.

[admin]

Re: ‘No Call Out Charge’ beware!!!

Re; The “no call-out charge” debate, there is an ad in our local paper that seems to beg official attention.
Incredible it may be, but this bloke gets away with “Most jobs from just £12 plus parts” This ad has run for at least ten years without challenge or alteration!!! :eeek:

[Martin]

Re: ‘No Call Out Charge’ beware!!!

fatbill wrote:This ad has run for at least ten years without challenge or alteration!!! :eeek:

Thanks for letting us know Bill of the diabolically unreal trading practices some will stoop to. 👿

Oh! And welcome to the forums by the way, look forward to your input :tup:

Martin

[poe]

I have just started charging a call-out after 12 Years of doing free call outs.
Stopped all the add’s which included “free call-out” in them.
And inform all the customers which ask that there would be a £25 Call-out including VAT.
Even some of these customers that we inform about the charge complain after we have given them an estimate and some refuse to pay.
Have any one of you Guys or Girls got a good letter for demanding payment.

Thanks Paul

[Martin]

poe wrote:Have any one of you Guys or Girls got a good letter for demanding payment.

Oh yes!…I have one that I composed years ago that makes your heart weep, eyes water and rush for the bog….I will PM you a copy if you like?

Martin

P.S. Just a quick tip though before I hit the sack as its passed my bedtime, as we Yorkshiremen say, NEVER DO OUGHT FER KNOWT, ‘N NEVER LEAVE T-HOUSE TILL THAS GOT THE BRASS IN THY POCKET!!! :lesson:

[poe]

Martin wrote:

poe wrote:
Have any one of you Guys or Girls got a good letter for demanding payment.

Oh yes!…I have one that I composed years ago that makes your heart weep, eyes water and rush for the bog….I will PM you a copy if you like?

Martin

P.S. Just a quick tip though before I hit the sack as its passed my bedtime, as we Yorkshiremen say, NEVER DO OUGHT FER KNOWT, ‘N NEVER LEAVE T-HOUSE TILL THAS GOT THE BRASS IN THY POCKET!!! :lesson:

Yes please Martin.

Thanks Paul

[kwatt]

Welcome to the site Poe since Martin forgot to mention it, but he’s old. 😉

I can assure you that (for an old dude ;)) that he writes a good letter and, if you don’t mind Martin can you send me a copy as well?

K.

[Penguin45]

Re: ‘No Call Out Charge’ beware!!!

It doesn’t get that far with us. Julia is a pefectly competent engineer, and will give a diagnosis and approximate estimate down the phone. However, she finishes with “It’ll cost you £40 if he comes out – up to you”. Soon sorts out the mickey takers and I go out to work.

The only exceptions are door catches, ‘cos we can do two of them an hour for a bit less.

Sort it all out before you go is the message.

Cheers,
Chris.

[Martin]

kwatt wrote:if you don’t mind Martin can you send me a copy as well?

OK here is one of my etchings then :-

Dear Sir or Madwoman,

It has come to my attention that the work we carried out to your washing machine on the (dd/mm/yy) has remained unpaid. I would like to take this opportunity to point out to you the importance of your prompt payment in order to offset the sacrifices that where made by us in order to ensure your machine was reinstated back into full working order .

The engineer that carried out this work for you is our most experienced, trustworthy and conscientious employee. However he has taken non payment of your account to a very personal level by submitting all the money owed to us by you out of his own pocket! On his insistence, we have reluctantly accepted the status quo to appease his troubled mind. For he has a wife and 4 young children (6, 5, 3 and 18 months). They have a large mortgage and a battered old Ford Mondeo that has just failed its MOT and can ill afford food for their children let alone the expense of trying to get the car back on the road. He had to cancel his family holiday to Butlins recently through not being able to finance the final payment they demanded.

He is also under the misapprehension that his job is now under threat because of all this, in spite of my personal assurance to the contrary. Also another member of staff has informed me he is taking what are believe to be anti-depressants, which is most out of character for a man that has a well known aversion to medication of any kind?

Before matters get any worse could I please appeal to you to settle your account with immediate effect in order he may at least get some much needed sleep at night. It would also be a very generous gesture on your behalf to add a little ‘tip’ that we can pass on to him for his own personal gratification (could I suggest 20{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}? – thank you!)

Yours most faithfully

Martin

[Dave_Conway]

Re: ‘No Call Out Charge’ beware!!!

OK, and the real one ??

You don’t actually send that do you ? 😆

Dave.

[Martin]

Re: ‘No Call Out Charge’ beware!!!

Dave_Conway wrote:You don’t actually send that do you ?

Not since I adopted the “I’m not leaving ’til you pay up!” approach :martin:

Martin

[eastlmark]

Re: ‘No Call Out Charge’ beware!!!

I started sending out a SAE with reminders and invoices and the response has been amazing. It seems the majority of non payers are not doing it not becuase they dont want to pay more that they read the letter/invoice and put it to one side, till they buy a stamp etc. It costs me the price of a stamp but its well worth it , I think anyway.
Cannot beat payment up front though.

[andy_art_trigg]

Re: ‘No Call Out Charge’ beware!!!

eastlmark wrote:I started sending out a SAE with reminders and invoices and the response has been amazing. It seems the majority of non payers are not doing it not becuase they dont want to pay more that they read the letter/invoice and put it to one side, till they buy a stamp etc. It costs me the price of a stamp but its well worth it , I think anyway.
Cannot beat payment up front though.

Spot on. This is what I realised many years ago and it definitely works. I always left a stamped addressed envelope with any customer that didn’t pay for whatever reason. This ridiculously small and inexpensive “trick” worked virtually every time. I concluded like you, that most of the non or late payment was because they couldn’t be arsed to buy a stamp or find and address an envelope.

Martin LMAO at that letter. 🙂 very funny.

[Author]

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