Personally, I believe that it is much easier to have a fixed hourly rate for all repair work. I.e., String breakage, repairing broken hammer shanks, sticking keys and the like. Regardless of said piano. If a job becomes more difficult and we are charging by the hour, we will naturally be paid more because it will take longer to complete the work. I have a set rate for carding hammers & regulation of an action. Of course some action jobs will be more expensive than others for the obvious reason of requiring more work. In particular if things need replacement. I judge that based on approximately how long I think it will take me to complete the work. I judge my estimate by what I see while I am looking at the piano. If I miss something, oh well, that's my fault not theirs. Unless that is, once I get it on the bench and discover something serious and costly. I automatically include key leveling on every regulation job. But, that does not mean the price will be the same. If they are not horribly out I may charge one price. If they are, it may be a lot more if some fly by night worked on it last. Then, it will likely cost considerably more because I have to figure out what they screwed up before I can fix reverse and and then fix it. Now here's one that many tuners do not do. I include a separate service call charge along with some labor time that I incorporate into my estimates for removal and installation of the action. Removal and installation has nothing whatsoever to do with performing the actual work on the action once it is setting on my work bench nor does driving to and fro twice. I liken it to an appliance repair man. They charge a service call to get them to the door. Then, their time begins. Their vehicles don't run on air and neither does mine. I also charge a service call just to get me to the door only for any repair work. My labor rate begins once I arrive and is NOT included in my service call charge. I do charge more when I travel out of town for tuning. It's not worth my time to drive out there otherwise. If they want ME to do it, I'll do it but only if I have a few others over there on the same day but most certainly, not for the same rate as if I could drive 15 minutes to get to a home instead of 45. My extra charge covers part of my time on the road and my vehicle expenses. Jer Groot RPT From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of wimblees at aol.com Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 6:07 PM To: Pianotech at PTG.org Subject: [pianotech] charges 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 regardless 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. _____ avast! Antivirus <http://www.avast.com> : Outbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 090910-0, 09/10/2009 Tested on: 9/10/2009 8:08:23 PM avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2009 ALWIL Software. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090910/94b0cef5/attachment.htm>
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