In light of the recent discussion about charging, let me make?some comments. To be sure,?I totally agree that we are entitled to charge what we want.?Some of you charge by the hour, some by the job.?How you charge by the job is up to you, but it should be based on some criteria. Most?charges for labor are based on an hourly rate, whether it's changing a tire, washing windows,?cutting grass, etc.?Our rates should be based the same way.?The?criteria for the hourly rate should be?based on a number of factors, like your overhead, your profit margin, and your experience.?In regard to experience, if we charged by how much experience we have, most of us would be charging $200 per hour, or more. But then we need to consider the "going rate". If the going rate for piano tuners is in the $75 - $125 per hour, and you charge $200 per hour,?you might be able to get a few customers, but most of the time, we'd be sitting waiting for the phone to ring. This experience, however, comes into play in how long it takes to do a certain job. The more experience?you have, the easier it is for you to do your work. If you?have lots of experience tuning over dampers, or squares, or regulating dampers, the easier it will be to do the work. But sometimes you'll?run into a?repair you've never done before.?This is when?your hourly rate?should be used as a basis for the amount you charge. But regadless of what your hourly rate is, I don't think it is ethical to charge different rates per hour based solely on how?"difficult" a job is.?What is the?definition of a?"difficult" job? For Conrad, should he charge extra because?it more difficult for him?to?tune a square or a tall upright because he is vertically challenged? Should I charge more to?tune a spinet, because a large protrusion in my middle makes it more difficult?to get closer to the tuning pins? There is another factor that come into play when we figure out how much to charge, namely our traveling time and distance between customers. Some of us work in a metropolitan area, where most of the clients are within an hour's drive of our house. Should we charge extra because it is more difficult to navigate rush hour traffic? Others live in a rural setting, where driving 2 hours to our first customer is the "norm". Should we charge more in the winter because it is?difficult?driving on?ice packed roads??Should we charge extra because it is more difficult to get to a customer's house??For example, this morning I?returned an action to customer who lives at the top of an 80 step staircase.?I'm overweight and have high?blood pressure. Should I charge this customer extra because it was very difficult for me to carry that action up those 80 steps? The bottom line is this. We have?fees for tuning a piano, regulating an action, hanging dampers, restringing a piano, etc., all based on an?hourly rate. That fee should be charged regardless of how difficult, or how easy, the work is. To?charge more, based on an arbitrary decision on how difficult a job is, in my opinion, is not ethical.?? Wim PS. Some of you will disagree with that opinion, which I respect, but that still doesn't give you the right to tell me I'm full of it or that I'm out of my mind. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090910/b84b8c84/attachment-0001.htm>
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