Daniel Instead of trying to figure out what surcharge to add to each customer based on how far away he/she lives from you, why not charge a flat fee for going beyond your immediate service area. I do this when I have to fly to a neighboring island. I just add an addition $25 to cover the cost of the flight and the rental of the car. In your case, figure out how much the trip costs, (not the actual cost of gas, but the IRS allowance on mileage for your car), divide it by the number of customers, and add that to each tuning fee. Most, if not all, of your customers will understand. When I fly, I try to get at least 4 appointments. But even if I have 5 or 6, I still add the same surcharge to each customer. Wim -----Original Message----- From: Daniel Carlton <carltonpiano at sbcglobal.net> To: Pianotech mailing list <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Tue, Oct 12, 2010 8:03 am Subject: [pianotech] ideas on mileage ok folks, i've got a question for you to give me some ideas on. i live in a medium sized city in texas, but i tune all over the texas panhandle, which means long drives, which means mileage charges. i always try to get as many service calls as i can, so i can divide my total mileage charge by the number of appts. so i've routed my next trip in maps.google and here it is: click here for the map 313 miles round trip. what i want to know is how you all might charge the customers in each area. what i'm thinking is have a base mileage for the everybody, then the further out the customer is, the more i tack onto the base. make sense? this can get a little complicated but i figure it's the fairest way. thoughts? daniel carlton -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101012/b31418e0/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC