AC Repair conundrum

Literally everything you just mentioned is called overhead. It is built into your.........labor rates. If you can't adequatley forecast/plan your overhead expenses to sufficently cover the day-to-day operations of your business then you should have never started one in the first place.

Padding your invoice to cover simple service calls in order to turn something that should be a way to get your foot in the door and establish trust with a customer into a one-off cash-cow is a sure-fire way to earn a terrible reputation. I've had two new a/c systems installed in the last 15 years since this particular incident happened..........guess who never even had a chance of giving me a quote.

Let me know when you open a motorcyle service center. I'd be super pumped to pay $3,200 to have some rearsets installed.

 

If you are mechanically inclined enough to troubleshoot it and fix it yourself, why don't you just do the annual "service" BS yourself.

 

Thanks for the business lesson. I’ll be sure to incorporate everything you said into my successful small service business that I have been running for the past 17 years. I should be a billionaire by next week.

I get a kick out of you saying you would not have gotten a quote from the contractor that you feel cheated you. Pretty sure that after you complained about the invoice and chiseled them down they wouldn’t have given you a quote anyways. I surely wouldn’t have.

My favorite customer is the one who knows how to do my job better than me. Jump in the pool if you are so good, there is enough water for all of us.

Customers think they’re the only person that matters. The old adage that the “customer is always right” only works for the customer.

 

"A sucker is born every minute" works just as well for those that would take advantage of them.

 

The customer is always right but some people are not worth having as customers. Hardest part of business is when things are not crazy booming (recent) telling people to go elsewhere, sometimes it is the best thing you can do.

 

LOL, that’s exactly what I was thinking.

When my wife and I bought the forklift company, no retail hours and business to business were a couple of the requirements we hoped to find in a business. Recession proof was another, but that’s a joke, even though people claim the forklift industry is recession proof.

What do you service?

 

Yea in my industry we don’t get much of that, but when we do, I consider firing that customer. I’m just not too good at firing customers.

We get a lot of, come diagnose my forklift and quote me for free. We always charge for the initial visit and separate out the quote to do the job. I can’t tell you how often customers argue that I promised them I would do the job and not charge for the initial visit. If I did it that way, all the jobs we don’t win, I would just eat all that time, money, gasoline, etc.

I can’t afford to do that, and generally business owners understand that. It’s the employee, with the save the world residential understanding, that grinds the heck out of you, and doesn’t truly understand the cost of business. We spend hours looking up all the parts and putting together the quote. Then they shop my quote around and possibly buy somewhere else.

I still itemize my quotes because I hate the sleazy feeling when I get a quote for something, and it just $2950 at the bottom.

 

I was once ignorant of running a business too.

Blew up my 930 turbo and sourced the parts to fix it and had it all apart. Was making about $10k a month back then and determined it would be smarter to pay someone to put it back together versus taking more time off from work to do it myself. I made a comment as I gave the shop the job, hey at least I have all the parts here that should help out, and he informed me that was not a good thing. I was 23 and it didn’t even cross my mind at the time, that I took some profit out of the job for him.

He did still charge me 40 hours labor, which is what he would have charged if I just brought it over in the first place. Plus, I wasted money buying a full set of Porsche 930 manuals, that were over $1,000 back in 1987, plus some specialty tools, that I never used to set the cam timing.

Anyone want to buy manuals and camshaft setting tools for a 911/930 turbo?

 

I sell and service fire sprinkler systems. Lots of worn out stuff that needs updating and repairing and all while working on something that no one wants to spend money on because they never plan to use it. LOL

 

The building I was in, was a former aerospace building, and had an old sprinkler system, from the 50’s I believe?

Fire department said you need to check and replace all defective valves. It was 15 years ago, so I can’t remember the exact cost, but it was pretty expensive, in an 18k building. The owner of the building, who I bought the forklift company from, said I had to pay, per the rental agreement I signed when buying the business.

I told him to pound sand. Then I moved out a year or so later and nothing had yet been done. The fire dept. was actually very cool to me, when I said I’m not paying for that, and will move out instead. They were also surprised the building owner was trying to push that expense onto me, but he was a huge a-hole.

 

Depending on the type of system that is not surprising. Our systems can be very expensive to maintain in that type of situation. But if you think about it a mechanical system that would last 50-60 years is an anomaly anyway. How many HVAC systems last more than 20 years? Not many. I routinely work on systems that are 50 years and older, some 100 years or more. That's some pretty good return on your money.

 

Not when he’s on a 3-5 year lease.

 

throw them on BAT and see what you get for them or put them on rennlist / PCA classifieds.

there's surely someone out there with a 200k 930t who'd like to decorate his garage with those.

 

Best benefit of my last job was the ability to fire a customer. That didnt stop the crazy bitch from going full karen to the BBB or the made up google & yelp review.

 

It was rare that we fired a customer but it did happen when my folks had an auto parts store. Of course we were such horrible people that decades later I get recognized AND very nice things said about my parents. By customers and old employees alike.

The problem with cheap people is you cannot make a living and go under. Only to be replaced by the next discounter. Better to provide great service at a fair price with quality work. Some people will not want that as google says but there is plenty that realize you are the better choice.

 

When I was growing up (and probably most of us) we had no access/visibility to what replacement parts cost the repair company at your home. Now, its as easy as just grab your smart phone and check what the cost is. Or head to the DIY/hardware store.

This means the taking advantage of a homeowner on the cost of replacement parts (call it overhead or whatever) is not the way to gain the trust of the homeowner.

In DFW, it's a huge market and losing 1 customer by doing that won't affect the business. But word (Google reviews) gets around and what goes around comes around. A few negative reviews will affect future business.

 

The future business it will affect are the types of customers no one wants.

 

Often you aren't paying for what you know. You are paying for what you don't know. I'm happy to pay someone for their time, knowledge and skill. I am often not happy to pay mark up on parts. What the part cost you plus 5% is about what the part should cost me. Anything outside of that is likely to cause a conversation neither of us really wants to have.

 

I agree with most of what you said but 700% markup on a part is BS.