tech fees

[Tim Keenan & Rebecca Counts]

Don, Carl, and list:

Also sprach Carl:

> >1)  There are legal ramifications.  Something about being
> >anticompetitive by trying to influence others which can look like price
> >fixing.
> >

I hardly think that discussing hourly labour rates constitutes price fixing.  Don--have you considered what 
NAFTA might have to say on the subject? ;-\

> >2)  Remember 76 trombones:  ".....but he doesn't know the territory."?
> >My piano service market, and the niche that I have carved out of it, is
> >bound to be very different from yours.
> >
> >There may also differences between shop rates and field rates, and
> >certainly differences between gross and net.
> >All true, no arguments--but it is interesting to know what the range is, especially for those of us with 
somewhat newer hats.

I, like Conrad, set my basic rate at somewere around half of my basic tuning fee.  I am still new enough at 
this business, however, that I sometimes take longer to do something than I think it should take.  For shop 
work, I generally use Joe Garrett/Randy Potter's "G" Piano Works Repair Labor Guide to give me a ballpark idea 
of the time a job should take, and base my estimate on that.  If the job takes me longer, I charge the book 
hours, if it takes me less, I charge actual time.

I know there is a wide regional variation in tuning fees in the US, but given the cost of living, I think our 
American colleagues do somewhat better on average.  I am new to this area (Northwestern BC), but at $75 CDN + 
7% sales tax, my tuning fee seems competitive.

In the much bigger market of southern Ontario, that fee was about the middle the range, with some as low as $60 
and some as high as $85.  For those who don't know, a US simoleon costs me about $1.42 today.

Tim Keenan
Terrace, BC