|
| Ek's Home | Forum | Chat | Electrical Links | |
| Subject - Trouble Shooting for a flat rate | |
| John A. Peters |
When you price a job with your flat rate book, I know you give the price before you find out where the problem is, because as Tech Daddy says, "The value of a service greatly diminishes as soon as it is performed" so if you find the problem before quoting a price then the customer could do it him self or call some one else. Am I right? What is your flat rate (in minutes, please) for these two similar jobs? I know you will not tell the customer the time, but instead you will show her the proper page in the book, but the forum users have such a varied local labor rates that minutes is the only way we can compare and share the knowledge. It is a typical occupied house built in circa 1990, sheet rock, standard breakers and white romex, metal boxes. 2 plugs and the light are dead in a back bedroom. The panel is on the outside of the front side of the house. There are about 12 to 15 romex cables entering the back of the all in one meter panel. Everything was ok until the house cleaner used the vacuum in the bedroom. You ask what happened and are told that "She checked the breakers and "flipped" some of them but they all looked ok." You test one of the dead plugs and it is a lost neutral. How many minutes? ________ Another case the same as above but the test shows a lost hot. How many minutes? ______ I don't want to know the price, just the time, assuming that the customer has paid for the travel time via credit card. When they agree to the price, what is the first tool or technique you will use? |
| IndCom | Hi John! I've been in similar instances and this is what I do. After arriving, I'll go ahead and question/troubleshoot. If it's a problem like you descibed; I'll give them my hourly rate plus approxiamate cost of material (if any, because it may just be a loose wire at the device or panel). Normally they find this acceptable and I'll perform the work. I've never tried to break in down into "minutes", always on an hourly basis. Plus why you're requesting the of breaking down into minutes is something I don't quite understand either 
|
| MONOLITH | Please correct me if I'm wrong John... I think john is looking to multiply his own hour rate by % of an hour, 45 minutes = .75 x {labor rate}. Maybe he doesn't have a one or two hour minimum charge, Like many companies do. I think what he's really after is getting a feel for "how long would this take you to fix". I have a tendancy to go in and locate the problem first (no 'troubleshoot' fee), then simply give a price to make the repair, and in that price I add back in some $ to cover the time I spent looking. This may or may not be the best way to do it, but I do not have a printed flat rate book or price list to show people, like you guys do. Also, I avoid any cases where I say "okay, it will be $xx an hour for me to look for the problem" and have them reject an hourly rate before I even start troubleshooting. |
| John A. Peters | The idea here is to move to flat rate pricing. Flat rate pricing is still based on how long the work is estimated to take multiplied by a slightly higher than normal hourly rate. I am making my own flat rates and I am trying to find out if you guys agree on how long it should take for example to find and fix a lost neutral on the average. I plan to use a little higher than that number and make a little better money, than I do working by the hour as we have been doing up until now. Am asking you how long it takes, rather than how much you charge because the retail labor rates very so much across the country. My guess is that it can take a couple of hours or even four hours to find a lost neutral. It's harder than finding a lost hot, which could just be a bad breaker. So if flat rate pricing is the way to go, why not extend it to cover things like a lost neutral. The one flat rate price book that I've had a chance to look at, stopped at that area. It basically said there were so much of a charge per half-hour of diagnosis and after the first half-hour was a little bit cheaper for diagnosis. But really be done a lot of trouble shoots you seen a lot of lost neutrals and we can come up with an estimate. I do think that we have to break down into some categories for example it's different if you have a new house that's unoccupied is brand-new romex, compared to working in an old house with knob into and tube wiring and there's all kinds of desks and stuff against the walls. I am hoping that somebody can help the work out some numbers for these kinds of flat rate items. Or maybe trouble shooting is too hard to flat rate? I don't think so. So far I see they say "System Trouble Isolation First 30 Minutes" This covers up to 30 minutes of systems trouble isolation at your premises and includes drive time. Any minor repairs (i.e. loose connections involving NO materials are included in this price. If an additional work is needed, we will get your approval BEFORE work begins. Then they have a Systems Trouble Isolation Add-on 15 minutes So what they really are doing in this area is actually a camouflage version of time the materials. The only other thing that differs is they have dual level pricing that gives a discount to those customers that have signed up for maintenance agreement and their time is priced in FIFTEEN MINUTE increments. |
| MONOLITH | quote: John, who is the 'they'. What Flat Rate book do you have? |
| John A. Peters | Have a few sample pages most of which I got off of the Internet one of them is copyrighted by the national standard price guide, another one is called the Utah electrical pricing guide and I have some promotional stuff from flat rate plus which is at flatratesystems.com and some other sample sheets from MrHVAC.com which are on plumbing prices, but they can still show me how they're doing things. So the "they" is all of them flat rate guys. |
| kiwisholland | John, In my flat rate book there is a section entitled "Diagnosis/Troubleshooting". As far as diagnosis only, There is: Level 1 Diagnosis- point to point circuit outage, 30 min. Level 2 - a series or grouping of outlets, fixtures, devices not working, 60 min. Level 3 -Multiple rooms or circuits not working. Fluctuating/ intermittent power needing extensive research, 120 min |
| wilkie | WARNING>>>>>>>!!!!!!! FLAT RATE PRICING IS MORE THAN A BOOK, IT IS A SYSTEM. I have not charged a "diagnostic" or troubleshoot fee in the last two years. Why you may ask? Because we have a very specific procedure. It begins at the door, responding to the customers off the wall ideas about whats going on, all the way down to pricing. It is a very specific system. If I were to try and use one part of that system, without utilizing the other parts, the results are disastrous. John, Your questions on this subject will be addressed shortly in the Charlie Greer DVD's |
| John A. Peters | I use a voltage sniffer. One of those that are shaped like a small cigar. I don't understand why they cannot sniff he voltage on the neutral side of a light bulb. I was on a trouble-shoot job where there was a short circuit. I put a light bulb in series with the shorted circuit wire and the breaker so I could keep the power on for tracing, without tripping the breaker. I turned off all the other circuit breakers except for the one with the short. The circuit sniffer was a no use! Does anyone know of a more sensitive circuit sniffer that can be used determine if there's power or not, in the neutral wire? Does anyone have any suggestions for troubleshooting a short? Edited in - Just now, as I read the above back to myself, I realized that perhaps it would have been smarter to find the neutral for the shorted circuit and put the light in series with the neutral wire and the neutral bar. That way I would have been able to sniff the circuit. Aa ha it sounds like a good idea and wonder if it will work! |
| cvelectric | John, I just use the old break the circuit in the middle deal(if there is anything else on the circuit). Flip the breaker on - if it holds, the short is after the break - if it trips it is before the break. Then go halfway and break it again. I then might try a circuit tracer to narrow down where the wires are, if I run out of places to break the circuit and haven't found it. This doesn't seem very efficient (or safe) to me but it usually works. I would also like to hear any other suggestions - maybe a new thread? |
| John A. Peters | The circuit was mostly concealed knob and tube, and as you know the splices are not accessable and there is no where to split the circit in half. I still wonder if my idea will work of putting the light bulb in series whith the white wire instead of the black one. |