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Mabe I charge too much

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To gain a little bit of part time income and to support my MR2 I do car audio security and custom lighting. Well part of the audio is basic component repair.

The story
Customer brings me a Kingwood amplifier (cruddy off brand) and states that the protect light comes on every time he tries to use it. Okay, not a problem, I ask him if it smelled like burnt beans, customer says yes. I tell him I am about 95% sure i fix it for him but I would charge a $25 diagnostic and repair fee just to crack the case weather I can fix it or not. He agrees, and leaves me with the amplifier.

I crack the case and sure enough it's a blown capacitor. I de-solder it and run to the local electronics store to get a replacement cost me all of $0.25. Get home and slap it into place and BAM working amplifier. Call the customer tell him that I fixed the amp and it will be $25 I am not charging him for the cost of the capacitor. Well he says I am ripping him off and he wants his amp back. I tell him that he will have to pay me the the $25 or I will keep his amplifier as stated in the contract he signed with me.

Well in the end I wound up with a $0.25 amp:D

Does any one think that mabe I charge too much, or am I in the wrong here? I kinda feel a little guilty for what I did but I think thats just my nice side trying to show. Thing is this guy didn't even buy it from me originally, and never used my services before. He also agreed to pay the $25 at first.

Well any advice?
 
The Mad Electrician said:
To gain a little bit of part time income and to support my MR2 I do car audio security and custom lighting. Well part of the audio is basic component repair.

The story
Customer brings me a Kingwood amplifier (cruddy off brand) and states that the protect light comes on every time he tries to use it. Okay, not a problem, I ask him if it smelled like burnt beans, customer says yes. I tell him I am about 95% sure i fix it for him but I would charge a $25 diagnostic and repair fee just to crack the case weather I can fix it or not. He agrees, and leaves me with the amplifier.

I crack the case and sure enough it's a blown capacitor. I de-solder it and run to the local electronics store to get a replacement cost me all of $0.25. Get home and slap it into place and BAM working amplifier. Call the customer tell him that I fixed the amp and it will be $25 I am not charging him for the cost of the capacitor. Well he says I am ripping him off and he wants his amp back. I tell him that he will have to pay me the the $25 or I will keep his amplifier as stated in the contract he signed with me.

Well in the end I wound up with a $0.25 amp:D

Does any one think that mabe I charge too much, or am I in the wrong here? I kinda feel a little guilty for what I did but I think thats just my nice side trying to show. Thing is this guy didn't even buy it from me originally, and never used my services before. He also agreed to pay the $25 at first.

Well any advice?

No, you did fine.

The customer might (just might) have a reason (but not a legal) to be a little tweaked if you had said it's not repairable but it's still $25 for the diagnosis, however you did tell him that up front and in the contract. But to be pissed at a successful repair for $25 is just nuts. What was his/her expectation anyway?
 
Leftyretro said:
No, you did fine.

The customer might (just might) have a reason (but not a legal) to be a little tweaked if you had said it's not repairable but it's still $25 for the diagnosis, however you did tell him that up front and in the contract. But to be pissed at a successful repair for $25 is just nuts. What was his/her expectation anyway?

I have no idea, what he wanted from me, I guess he was just trying to get his amplifier fixed for free. Thats my only guess. I am going to put the amp in a closet for about 3 months then If he dosn't come around I guess I'll put it on my car or sell it.
 
Your pricing is more than fair, 25$ it's really nothing.

I got few customers like that when i had my repair shop. One of the reason why i closed it.

3 months sounds about the legal delay to sell it.
 
I think if you charged $25.00 for diagnosis and labour and an additional $5.00 for the capacitor then he would have paid you.
 
congatulation with your new amp
mark the the 3 months later date in your calander
and hope you have more of those customers :D

anny thoughts of shipping them some where :D
 
The Mad Electrician said:
To gain a little bit of part time income and to support my MR2 I do car audio security and custom lighting. Well part of the audio is basic component repair.

(snip) ..... I tell him that he will have to pay me the the $25 or I will keep his amplifier as stated in the contract he signed with me.

given those two statements above, is this sideline income of yours an actual registered business, complete with tax ID and ficticous business name? If not you really don't have a legal leg to stand on and would be a target for a bunch of grief if the customer were to get the ball rolling over you. If you are legal (IRS and so on) then you have nothing more to be concerned about. $25 inspection/estimate fee seems a tad high (for my region) but cost of living in your area may well justify that. Also, you should always apply that $25 estimate fee towards the final repair cost as any good shop does, just in case you already aren't doing it.
 
A lot of shops have a minimum bill out time. $25 sounds reasonable to me especially since you fixed it for that price.
 
Re: Maybe I charge too much

$25 to say hello to an injured amp sounds pretty reasonable/fair. Might even be kinda low(??!) Anyways this is a cheap Kingwood amp and even a $2.50 repair fee will appear too much for some customers!!
 
I'd like to see him try to find a working model of the same for $25 bucks, damn good reasonable fee to me.
 
The Mad Electrician said:
Does any one think that mabe I charge too much, or am I in the wrong here? I kinda feel a little guilty for what I did but I think thats just my nice side trying to show. Thing is this guy didn't even buy it from me originally, and never used my services before. He also agreed to pay the $25 at first.

Well any advice?

Perfectly fine - and (if anything) $25 is too low for an inspection fee!.

My advice, and where you made your mistake!, was not to take the $25 off him when he gave you the amp - this is common practice amongst many service agents these days.

You could then have rung and told him it's repaired, and there's an extra $5 to pay for the parts!.
 
25.00 USD = 12.7562 GBP

you don't charge enough, and i agree with nigel.. up front payment would be better, what if it was unrepairable? dud amp, time [and components?] spent trying to fix it, no money.
 
He'll come try to buy it off you after he figures out he can't buy another one that isn't a POS for $25. ROFL.
 
Custumer service relations are the toughest things to deal with. $25.00 to just take a look, is quite reasonable. He was given the price up front, and agreed to it. Had the choice of taking it elsewhere if the fee seemed high, or the amp really wasn't worth spending $25-$100 to have repaired. He agreed to pay you to look at it, and got the repair for free, and still complained... pitiful. Some people would complain if you just handed them money for no reason. Try not to let it get you down, hopefully you have plenty of more positive customers.

I get talked into working on stuff all the time. I know a little troubleshooting, parts and PCBs, but not as a trade. I usually enjoy the challenge, but don't enjoy dealing with people so much. Mostly, I like getting stuff that is one step from the trash bin. If I fix it, great. If not, usually get to keep it for parts.
 
I worked at a high volume service shop and they charged $19.00 (US) for initial inspection fee which was then applied towards the final repair cost if so. Rarely did anyone skip out on that payment. If so they as awll as any other equipment that remained unclaimed was sold on the store front shelves at a later time... and that usually brought in more chash flow than the repair itself. Of course the $19 fee was 10 years ago financial climate.

Camcorders were serviced at $45/hr and industrial video was $150/hr. I had plenty of business my way and loved the industrial video work since I received 55% of that amount. Someone spends $7000 on a vcr and suddenly spending $150/hr is reasonable to get it going again!!
 
I think we're all in agreement that the $25 was ethically (and most likely, legally) in the clear. I think the question that might be bugging the OP is, was this commercially the best thing to do?

The source of consternation is that the offended customer might be vocal to other potential customers about his displeasure with your business, and thus drive their business away. Hence, "The customer is always right." But c'mon! The customer isn't always right - if they were, they wouldn't need someone else's business!

I think the only solution is to be consistent, be fair, and keep on top of the status quo for your profession (all of which you've done). There will always be outliers (or outright liars?) no matter how well you do your business, whether those people are just uninformed or consciously trying to swindle you.

You had your contract, and you stuck with your end of it. Commercially, it's a great deal (but then if your customer was an informed consumer, he probably would have bought a model less prone to break-downs than he did in the first place).

As for the legality of your "business," I'm pretty sure the law's on your side, even if you're not a registered business. I'm quite sure the law is here, but these things tend to change from province to province and state to state. In Canada, you don't have to have a registered business in order to earn extra income, as long as you claim everything when it's tax time. I gather there are tax and legal advantages to registering your business, but I'm still not entirely sure of what those are (and again, that seems to change depending on where you are).

In short, a contract's a contract, whether as part of a business transaction or just between two people (actually, in Canada, I think I remember learning that verbal contracts are binding, no signature needed!). The law will protect the parties of either situation equally.
 
HiTech said:
$25 inspection/estimate fee seems a tad high (for my region) but cost of living in your area may well justify that.

$25 sounds very cheap to me, but that might be because of the exchange rate. $25 would be pretty much £12.50 over here, which would buy you just under half an hour of my time (and that's being very reasonable).

Personally I think a charge of £30-£40 would be a reasonable price to pay for one hour's worth of an Engineer trained in Electronics Diagnostic's time. That time would buy you a diagnostic report on the item, but probably not the repair as well. If the item is beyond economical repair then the diagnostic work to come to that conclusion would still have to have been done and therefore the £30-£40 charge would still be payable.

£30-£40 translates to $60-$80 in your money, although I'm not sure if that's a reasonable comparison to make.

Brian
 
Funny how the exchange rate determines the cost of things?

In South Africa, (where our currency RAND vs. USD = $0.1466/R) and (Rand vs. GBP £0.0748/R) it usually costs R60.00 (~$8.8) or (~ £4.49) for handling fee to open and inspect. And we think R60 is expensive :D
 
SPDCHK said:
Funny how the exchange rate determines the cost of things?

In South Africa, (where our currency RAND vs. USD = $0.1466/R) and (Rand vs. GBP £0.0748/R) it usually costs R60.00 (~$8.8) or (~ £4.49) for handling fee to open and inspect. And we think R60 is expensive :D

So how many pints of beer can you buy for that? - you're looking under two pints in the UK.
 
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