Haunted House....and cleaning fees

[Bill Ballard]

At 6:03 PM -0400 9/7/01, Clyde Hollinger wrote:
>Today I had to put new hinges on a piano bench and also a lid prop which it
>apparently never had which would explain why the hinges were broken. 
>I did *not*
>charge the normal hourly rate, because it took me longer than I 
>thought it should
>have.

I don't think it's a matter of labor rate (whether for free or tied 
to the standard tuning fee). It's the time which can be 
unpredictable. One would guess that Corey has some "sweat equity" in 
this introduction to "root-level" cleaning (if indeed this is the 
case. One might be wrong...)

Irrespectigardless, even in seasoned hands, it's still alot of manual 
labor, and worse, of unpredictable quantities. I think (IMHO), if we 
could sort out all of our "beginner's try" time, all the goose-chase, 
head-scratch time, we'd probably find that the actual Net Time for 
this job was actually a bigger block of time than what we had 
originally tossed out when quickly running over the possibility of it 
at the outset.

Many of us would be caught in this same bag, and not for lack of 
honesty, either. Ask me how long it takes to replace three cedar 
hammer shanks on an upright, especially just before I proceed to do 
it on your piano, and the hourly figure which comes out of my mouth 
is on the lean and hopeful side. Looking it up in a book is a very 
good basis. But if you happen not to, and your "guestimate " is 
sorely short of the real Net Time, you would not be alone. Every time 
I do it, it hurts.

But I do think we should get paid for what we accomplish. Not 
included in this would be the "learning portion" of the overall (or 
Gross) Time. But as we learn to do this properly, there are ways to 
construct a total Net Time, which will serve as our billable hours. 
If our customer needs to be explained what went into the work, we've 
got our notes on the Net Time as the basis. They'll know they're 
getting solid work, and that our thumb is not on the scale.

If it comes own to "cropping" the number of billable hours, maybe the 
fairest thing to offer is that we and the customer divided the amount 
in question, ie., "split the difference" between the real time and 
the overall time. Both kinds of time have to be acknowledged. (And 
don't you dare include the "thanks-for- the-milk-and-sugar-donut" 
time, they don't appreciate paying for the time you spend enjoying 
their good will.)

Having an accurate way of accounting for our time is how professional 
billing develops. (And the sooner we can get pad for it. That is 
unless you're going to look it up in a book, which is actually a very 
good basis.

Hey, we're professionals, we get to bill like this because we want 
to, right?..... actually, more likely, because we deserve it.

But boy, it can be a surprise, how long it really takes to plug and 
rebore lid hinges, on site.


Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

"Come on, a priest and a rabbi?! I think I've heard this one before"
     ...........the Punjabi/Irish barkeep in "Keeping the Faith"
+++++++++++++++++++++