Billing for your time...was Re: Insurance confusion

[Carl Root]

Hi David and Wim and others,

I wouldn't have gone that far unless I could do a whole day's worth of
work or the client agreed to pay my hourly rate for ALL my time spent -
driving and working.

The fact that you couldn't do much productive work was their fault in
the case of the lock box and mostly their fault in that they neglected
to tell you that their 'piano' wasn't.  You spent time on their behalf
as requested. 

I will assume it wasn't an emergency, so I would charge either a minimum
of $50, and $100 really more accurately reflects the amount of time you
spent.

Two nonproductive (from their standpoint) appointments make it a tough
call, though.

In response to other comments -  I can't recall any service professional
ever calculating  their travel time for each call in my suburban
neighborhood.  The average is a half hour per client so everyone pays
the same.  If anticipated travel time is appreciably more, most of us
would refer the job to someone else.  

Carl