tech fees

[Carl Root]

I think there's a fairly simple way of looking at the issue of what to
charge for taking on a job for which you have little experience.

You are considering accepting a job for which you have little
experience.  If you feel that you have sufficient training to do the
work satisfactorily, even though you lack experience (and if you have
the time), go ahead and take the job.  Every job has to done for the
first time once, right?

Now, how much to charge.  There have been recent posts that refer to
time charts showing how long an experienced technician will take to do
the job.  Multiply that times your hourly rate and that's what you
charge.  

Will it take you longer to do the job?  It might, for two reasons.  1)
You have little experience doing a job of this kind so the average job
will take longer until you get several of them under your belt.  2)
Perhaps you failed to recognize that a particular job requires more time
than average for even the most experienced technician.  

The customer doesn't care how long you take (unless it's way out of
line).      
Quality of the job is all that's important.  Are you going to net the
same on this job as you do for your other work?  No, but you don't have
to because this job represents only a small portion of your income.  If
you're taking on a lot of 'first time' work, well . . . .  you're a
beginner and you've got to pay your dues.

You can make a living doing piano service work by learning to do quality
work as efficiently as possible.  Either that or be willing to work long
hours.  Either way,  you should still understand what the fair market
value of your work is and charge accordingly. 

I should mention as an aside to Wim that I think the technician who
calculates his hourly rate by doubling his hourly salary does not fail
because he did not take his business expenses into account,  I think
it's much more likely that he assumed that his weekly gross income would
be forty hours times his hourly rate for his new piano service
business.  New technicians routinely underestimate how hard it is to
build and maintain a large enough client base to support themselves.

Just to complicate matters,  a significant number of technicians don't
want or need piano service income to provide the lion's share of
household income.