Do You charge all time?

[BrickPilot]

Put yourself in this situation.
You've travelled an hour to attend two customers, on attending to the first one you are requested to obey a fire evacuation drill they randomly decided to have (it's in a big factory). There is no escape and you stand in a car park waiting (the car is "out of bounds"). The lost time means that the day is over and you miss out on making your next customer. So you send a bill for this time.

Would you charge the time to be a part of their drill? And would you stand your ground if they complained of being charged?

Last time something like this happened was when an old lady with dementure was found lost in a customers shop. There was just the one staff member and I stayed an additional hour to assist until ambulance arrived, did theit thing and departed. Naturally there was no bill in that situation and I had no complaint for lost time.

The other time issue I have no regret for charging is when contacts finally appear in their reception after several repeated apologies from the lady on the desk. "Sorry to keep you waiting" to which I'd sometimes I'd say "That's quite ok, I charge from the time I enter your reception".

Has anyone timed their longest wait in reception just to get to a job?

So when do you and when don't you similarly charge time?
Has anyone else been unusually caught similarly like this?

[Claudio]

Labor charge begins as soon as you walk inside the customers premises.
If you called the customer ahead of time to let them know your were on your way, the firedrill time is the customer's responsibility because they should have notified you there was going to be a firedrill. If they did not know there was going to be a fire drill, you still have to be paid for your time.
If you did'nt call before going to the customer's office, then there is room for customer to dispute that time used up in the fire drill.

[Jules Winfield]

Charge. This is a business. Maybe someday UNICEF will get into the copier repair business, but until that happens technicians need to be paid for their time.

[Tom]

Please, charge as much as you can whenever you can. I love all the new customers that keep calling me due to high price copier companies charging for everything under the sun. The answer is NO. Businesses these days are having a tough time making it & they're looking for good service at a good price. I charge less than my competitors by keeping my overhead down. I don't charge for travel time because I have a 40 mile radius. I also don't charge for estimates for copier repairs. I love it when a new customer calls me & wants an estimate, but the company they're dealing with want to charge over $100 to walk in the door. I go in, always quote a little less than what I think they would, & get either the service work, or sometimes a new sale out of the deal. Perhaps some of you bigger companies should start charging for sales calls too. I know your boss needs a bigger house. The point I'm trying to get across (with a touch of sarcasm) is that you can price yourself right out of business. People just want to be treated fairly. Unfortunately, too many techs work for a computer these days, & don't have the option of using common sense these days when dealing with the customer.

[Claudio]

Hey Tom:
I had to read your reply a couple of times before I understood what you were saying.
My personal experience is that if you bill cheaper, you will also inherit all the cheap customers with all the headaches that go with it. So hope you have fun doing it.
Also, I believe in the saying "You get what you pay for".

[blackcat4866]

I was called out to GM to service a Panafax in one of the plants. The plant manager wanted to be present for the repair so he asked me to wait in the waiting room until he arrived. Well I waited 2 hours for him to arrive in the waiting room. He called me every 10 minutes to say that he was on the way.

Damn right, I billed him for 2 hours, 35 minutes.

[fixthecopier]

I have most of my stuff in the same area, almost all within 15 min of each other. I never have travel time come into it. I give free estimates and a guarantee that if I do not fix it they do not pay for labor, just the cost of shipping parts back. I just had a printer whip me. I put at least 8 hours in it and when I took it back, unfixed, the bill was less than an hour of my time. I have taken a lot of customers away from techs who charge to put a toner cartridge in. On base the copiers are chosen at a high level, and the end user has no say so in it. I consider it a badge of honer to have my stickers all over the printers and faxes in an office that has a competitors copier. When it comes to paid work, they get to pick who does it. The free estimate thing has got me in the door to make some sales. I also give a 90 day warranty to not double charge for labor. If I service a printer and it blows the fuser 2 months later, they just pay for the fuser. I act as kind of a free agent doing this as the other techs play by the book and charge for everything. Most years I bring in more cash than any 2 or 3 of the other techs in the shop, so I think my system works well. However if I had to travel long distance to do calls, I would charge for my travel time and field estimates.

[Claudio]

Attaboy! Blackcat

[Tom]

No, Claudio, how about attaboy "fixthecopier". It sounds likehim & I have a lot in common. I suppose Claudio does have a point in that you can pick up some pretty cheap customers out there that want something for nothing. I'm not talking about them though. I'm talking about the small business thats just trying to make a living like the rest of us. Most big copier dealers treat them second rate, while going after the big accounts. It's been my experience that the big accounts make up a smaller profit percentage. They have little loyalty, make you bid for every sale, & you make a pittance on service contracts. Then they cry like a stuck pig every time there's a jam. The smaller customers are so much easier to deal with & will stay with you forever if treated right. You can make a higher profit on contracts also. I do have the advantage of picking & choosing the machines I sell & the customers I will take. After 15 years as a tech working for the bigger companies, I started my own. I'm very careful about what machines I will sell. NO JUNK. Since I give double the wty that the so called big company do, I have to make sure they're going to work well. Mostly in the 20-35 cpm range. We all know a salesman cares nothing about the customer once he's got the sale, so he will sale any piece of junk the boss picked up (who also cares about nothing but short term profit). So I do all my own sales, don't have to pay commission, beat their price & win the deal almost every time. This being said, the only customers I've lost were some very small ones that went out of business this year due to the economy. Never to the competition. Good service, lower prices, why would they leave? I will, however, walk away from an account that is not profitable. I just don't believe in gouging, & I had to do it too many times working for the 'big guys'.

[OMD-227]

Back when I was at a dealer, we didnt charge travel, unless it was a special trip requested. All of our clients at the time (850 machines on contract, countless others), would happily wait as they knew they wouldn't have to pay for travel. The office girls would tell them that a tech would be in their area on a certain day that week when they logged the call (we covered an area of 200kms radius).

Everything was sweet, until one day the boss got a nasty call from a new client, complaining about being charged a huge amount for some work done late, after-hours and extra for travel (this was mainly charged to pay that tech for all the extra time he put in that day). I was in the workshop at the time and over-heard some serious 'potty-mouth' coming from the boss' office. Next thing, he drives off in the delivery van, taking a few other techs with him, and they come back an hour later with the whole copier, finisher, LCT....everything!
Turns out the client was told that he was not worth having as a customer, and if he was going to be such a pain in the ass every single month, we didn't want his business!
That only happened once in my 10 years there, but it was certainly a beautiful day to be in the workshop at the time.

[rar0411]

we have to charge, us guys are an expense to to company we work for, at least thats the way it is seen in the uk, if it aint the printers fault then its gonna cost you!

[jonezy999]

I work for a smallish dealer, who covers mainly toshiba, ricoh and canon. We cover atleast a 1000km radius, and even on scheduled trips we need to charge travel. Some days we have one tech do 800km round trip plus 6-8 jobs, so the whole 8hr day is spent driving plus however long it takes to do the work. Im sure you can see why we charge for travel. We do however combine travel costs between the customers for that particular trip.
As for waiting in the reception, Im all for charging. Have stood in the reception of police stations for over an hour on 2 occasions.

[Stirton.M]

Most calls I do are all on service contract. The only time we charge for calls is when it is network related and passed a 30 day install grace period. We ensure the customer is aware of that at the time of install. Any new driver or other network based call will be subject to a charge, no exceptions.

It is rare that a customer will be on time and materials, but when they are, we do not like to screw around, and yes, like black cat, I would charge them the time they made me wait, or for example, they ask for an image unit and upon my arrival I discover that the machine needed the other image units or other consumable, I will charge for the time I have to return to the shop to get those parts. My attitude is, if you are too cheap to buy a service contract, that is not my problem. There are third party service companies around town, but most have substandard techs, hacks, as one coworker calls them.

[copyman20]

We use to offer free estimates. The customer would then take the estimate and show it to a tech that will then charge them less for labor and try and get the parts themselves.

The machine would run for a week or so before F*%^ing up, then expects you to come out and fix it for free because it never worked right after you did the estimate.