Haunted House....and cleaning fees

[SimsPiano@AOL.COM]

Thanks a lot Bill,
Your post was very well put.  I did end up charging 1.5 hours since I knew 
that a lot of my time was educational.   And some of that was spent 
reattaching hammer springs.
Thanks again,
Corey

In a message dated 9/8/01 5:06:54 AM, yardbird@pop.vermontel.net writes:

>
>I don't think it's a matter of labor rate (whether for free or tied 
>to the standard tuning fee). It's the time which can be 
>unpredictable. One would guess that Corey has some "sweat equity" in 
>this introduction to "root-level" cleaning (if indeed this is the 
>case. One might be wrong...)
>
>Irrespectigardless, even in seasoned hands, it's still alot of manual 
>labor, and worse, of unpredictable quantities. I think (IMHO), if we 
>could sort out all of our "beginner's try" time, all the goose-chase, 
>head-scratch time, we'd probably find that the actual Net Time for 
>this job was actually a bigger block of time than what we had 
>originally tossed out when quickly running over the possibility of it 
>at the outset.
>
>Many of us would be caught in this same bag, and not for lack of 
>honesty, either. Ask me how long it takes to replace three cedar 
>hammer shanks on an upright, especially just before I proceed to do 
>it on your piano, and the hourly figure which comes out of my mouth 
>is on the lean and hopeful side. Looking it up in a book is a very 
>good basis. But if you happen not to, and your "guestimate " is 
>sorely short of the real Net Time, you would not be alone. Every time 
>I do it, it hurts.
>
>But I do think we should get paid for what we accomplish. Not 
>included in this would be the "learning portion" of the overall (or 
>Gross) Time. But as we learn to do this properly, there are ways to 
>construct a total Net Time, which will serve as our billable hours. 
>If our customer needs to be explained what went into the work, we've 
>got our notes on the Net Time as the basis. They'll know they're 
>getting solid work, and that our thumb is not on the scale.
>
>If it comes own to "cropping" the number of billable hours, maybe the 
>fairest thing to offer is that we and the customer divided the amount 
>in question, ie., "split the difference" between the real time and 
>the overall time. Both kinds of time have to be acknowledged. (And 
>don't you dare include the "thanks-for- the-milk-and-sugar-donut" 
>time, they don't appreciate paying for the time you spend enjoying 
>their good will.)
>
>Having an accurate way of accounting for our time is how professional 
>billing develops. (And the sooner we can get pad for it. That is 
>unless you're going to look it up in a book, which is actually a very 
>good basis.
>
>Hey, we're professionals, we get to bill like this because we want 
>to, right?..... actually, more likely, because we deserve it.
>
>But boy, it can be a surprise, how long it really takes to plug and 
>rebore lid hinges, on site.
>
>
>Bill Ballard RPT
>NH Chapter, P.T.G.
>