<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: Service Fee</title></head><body> <div>On 1/6/05, Terry said:</div> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial">Recently I had my refrigerator serviced. $75 to walk through the door plus $60/hr. plus parts.</font>.........</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Terry, I had the same sort of experience and I think youre exactly right. My wife called an electrician because the disposal was shorting out the kitchen fuses. $60 to walk in, $25 to disconnect the disposal, total time 15 minutes. I replaced the ailing beast myself over the weekend. The furnace guys do the same thing for a yearly check up, the appliance folks the same. Plus they wont give you an arrival time, like I will, and stick to it. I do have a friend who is a plumber and his insurance for gas fitting is outrageous, and he has to maintain a parts inventory that I dont, but otherwise his expenses are not that different, office and vehicle and tools. Auto shops have big overhead in terms of utilities, equipment and insurance, but if I could get $60/hour for my shop time I'd be retired! Plus I have to pick up and deliver. And still I'm competing with estimates of $2800 to restring, replace hammers, bleach keys, replace all action cloth and leather and regulate a grand piano. I'm not kidding, looked at it last night. And there is always some one with a peterson strobe who thinks $35 is great for a tuning. At least those customers often end up calling me to repair the damage btu I get tired of that after a while. I spent 6 years working for a harpsichord builder, if you put 600 hours plus materials into an instrument that sells for 20K, thats 33/hr out of which comes all overhead and materials and assistants wages. But they have to compete with basement kit builders willing to sell an externally similar instrument for 10K. Of course, it's not nearly the quality, and some people recognize  that, but like tuning, it's shocking how many dont. Enough ranting, guess youre note caught me on a bad day  :)</div> <x-sigsep><pre>-- </pre></x-sigsep> <div>----Dave<br> <br> <br> -----------------------------<br> Dave Doremus, RPT<br> New Orleans<br> ------------------------------</div> </body> </html>