Your shop rate and poilicies

[Randall]

Curious as to what folk's shop rates are, especially with regards to location and competition. Also, What policies do you have regarding minimum bench charge, deposits, what you do if you can't fix it or break it, etc? I sub contract at the big factory authorized shop here in Maine (pretty much everything except JBL/Crown), and we are having this conversation now. This shop charges $80/hr, $40 min fee, divided in 10 minute increments. He gives a lot of time away.

My rates on my home basement bench are $40/hr for the first hour, and then $30/hr after that. Min $40, unless it is really simple, then I vamp. I almost never go past 2 hrs. If I do, or if it is something that is not really that involved that I am just not getting, I will stay on it like a pit bull with it's jaws locked until I eventually get it. In those cases, it's not about money, it's about not getting beat. But, enough about me.

[Enzo]

I post a charge of $60 an hour. I honestly do not know what the other shops in town charge.


I am interested in the long term relationship, so mainly I want the customer to feel he is being treated fairly and honestly. If a guy comes in here and his speaker plug is halfway out of the jack, and I pop it back into the jack, I might not charge at all, or I might tell him "Man, I gotta charge you something, so $20 instead of $60 today." I could charge a stiff and steep rate chart, or I could charge what feels right for the repair. It is just me. so I can do what I want. I tend to charge an hour minimum for actual repair work. But I probably will charge $75 out the gate for a tube amp repair. SO that is more like your $40/30, in that mine is &5/60 or something.


If I charge someone $45 to replace an input jack in a little practice amp, I sometimes hear "But its just one little jack and I only paid..." But if I preface it with , "Well I normally charge a $60 minimum, but I'll give you a break and only charge $45 today, they feel like they got a deal.


We used to sell tubes of Hammond Organ oil for $1.50. SOmeone would come in and ask for it, and I'd tell them $1.50 or three for $5. Amazing how many people automatically went for the "deal." No, I never actually charged that way, I didn;t want them to get home and realize they'd been ripped off, even for 50 cents. I'd give them a couple seconds then admit it was a joke. But the power of "a deal" is awesome.


$80 in 1/6 hour increments? I'd probably go to $90 just so the time divided into the rate more evenly.


A rigid minimum, like $45, gets in the way when the repair is tacking a wire back onto the XLR at the butt of a hand mic. I keep the flexibility to charge $10-15-20 or whatever for some small item. Customer loyalty is very fragile.

One thing to do is have the counter people doing triage. Unless you ARE the counter guy, whoever accepts the repair across the counter should check the thing out. HE should find that speaker plug falling out, or the white tube that is cracked. That saves you having to wrangle over the bench fees. And even if you have some unprinted $30 minimum, the customer can talk to the counter person, who can do a simple repair, then counter guy walks in back for a moment and returns to tell customer, "I asked the service manager if I could just charge you $30 today instead of the full bench charge. He said OK." Power of a deal.


Straight time is one thing, but if you struggle to make some repair, then see a similar failure a week later, and you can go right to it, should you penalize yourself for the gained skill of the previous repair? The more experience I get the quicker the average repair time. SHould I make less and less per repair as I age? Point being, I am not to worried about keeping a detailed log for the customer. The customer needs to see a reasonable repair bill, not a train schedule of labor. I once had a PV XR600 blowing fuses show up on the bench 15 minutes before we closed one night. I thought to myself I'd just open it up and see what it would need so I could get right on it in the morning. 11 minutes later, it was fixed and on the burn-in bench. I sure as hell am not going to change 10 minutes for that. And as the the remaining 4 minutes, I just waited around for the clock. A repair log is for your employer, not so much the customer.

[km6xz]

Most shops do not base their rates on costs or actual time, so it is determined by competition, guesses as to how much the market will bear and intuition.
Some adopt flat rates if they specialize in something and others post an hourly rate but do not use it strictly. The customer thinks they are paying for bench time but that is a poor indicator of value, since it assumes that labor is simply doing the activities of replacing a part as if on an assembly line. But the assumption is wrong. A good diagnostician who identifies the problem and corrects it in 30 minutes is penalized by such a concept of straight time billing. A hack, or inexperienced tech might take 6 hours(you have read the stories here of "techs" who need help for the most basic troubleshooting, which take many days or weeks to resolve plus dozens of unnecessary parts changes, even with the forum's assistance) would benefit unfairly for spending a lot of time, unproductive time on the repair. So that suggests that a value of the repair not based on time but on effectiveness. The incentive would be for the tech to get better. Flat rates work that way, where the shop benefits if it is more effective than average shops. It rewards shops who go to the expense and effort to stock large parts inventories.
Picking a flat rate model based on types of units is tricky, it can seem too high for the fast repairs that are the bread and butter coverage of shop overhead and is too cheap on very involved repairs that involve correcting bad prior repairs or damage. To avoid losing out to the hack down the street who can fix the minor stuff and charges a lower price based on the short time required to do a very minor repair, a shop using the flat rate pricing model usually has a minor repair charge for very simple repairs.

The problem with bench charges is that much of the total repair cost of doing business is not related to bench work. Unless you have $10s of thousands of dollars in inventory, you are spending more time chasing parts than bench time quite often. Do you charge for all that catalog and ordering time, or the time wasted when receiving the wrong part and shipping it back?
A fair way of charging but will not be adopted is totally the total cost of running the shop for the day, and dividing that by the number of hours the shop was open as the hourly rate, times the portion of the day that each repair took. That would be fair but impractical since many shop activities such as spending the day logging parts orders, do not reflect income for the day. So doing that same formula over a month or two would give a more realistic value of the work. Other factors to include in the equation is reserves for returns, even if your repair is sound, the customer might bring it back due to something else in the system preventing the unit you repaired from appearing to work(for example a bad speaker cable used on the amp you just repaired causes you to take bench time to prove that the amp is working fine, that the problem is elsewhere). You have to take those returns into consideration when determining the total cost of running the shop.
For some routine repairs, ones that you do very often, for example from a local shop which only sends one brand to you, it is possible to get quite good at predicting the time and cost of doing the repair. For example we were doing a lot of ADAT digital tape decks, 10s of thousands of them, more than anyone else in the world to the point that the factory just ended up closing their 23 tech repair shop and shipped all the customer and store returns to us on pallets every day. It became clear after the first 5,000 how long it would take so established a flat rate for the factory, of $65 regardless of the time it took. That was not including parts but we were shipped the parts we needed which was deducted from the parts balance if the unit was warranty or for the factory. Most shops with flat rate were charging $150-300 for each ADAT. The factory was charging $280 for non-warranty for the units we repaired for $65 but they covered shipping both directions and parts. That was profitable because we knew the average repair time was 30-40 minutes and there was no parts hunting time, every unit that landed on the benches was repaired at one sitting.
So there are many models that work, in the case of doing subcontracting, much depends on the relationship with the store. How good are they in generating good quality complaint writeups? How good are they at verifying the symptoms. If no to either of these, the rate needs to be much higher because it will cause a lot of spinning wheels without proper information. It they can't give good working information to you, your job of determining the real complaint or how to reproduce it will possibly double your wasted time. We did work for a number of stores and eventually stopped working for a few because their salesmen could not ask simple questions to pinpoint a symptom or complaint. Their write up would be "fix it" or "noisy" with no explanation as to how to recreate the symptom or what else was hooked up to it at the time.
Is the shop you are working for doing the parts ordering and do they have a large stock themselves? If not, build that into your rate, the time off the bench chasing parts will often double the cost to you of doing the repair. If it is a high volume store it could be worth hiring and training your own counter person to sit at the store and handle customer service, it could be a bigger savings in bench time to easily cover the extra cost of another employee.

[Amp Kat]

Great points by both above and it really does depend on lots of variables as to what you have to charge. I'don't have a shop anymore as I turned my time into playing and repairing my own instead of fixing everybody elses but have had my own shop and worked for someone else that had a music store.

Own Shop Wow can you say "Overhead"and that is just a killer in this business and the more you have obviously the less you make and the higher your rates have to be which could all but halt your work load if you aren't established or have no competition however that is rarely the case.

Working for Shop I feel pretty fortunate that I had an awesome owner who didn't charge me for rent which is very rare but I also pulled in 90% of the business. Everything changes and overhead is no longer a problem so you can basically charge what you want and give lower rates which is unreal what that will do for your workload. Once word gets around that you are cheaper than your competition and do good work you will have to wade through the pile of amps you have to repair. If you work on Solid State Amps most of the time you spend is taking them apart so I charged more for them and lets be honest that tube amps are much more fun to work on.

Either way you look at it you have to charge enough to make a living but still make the customer feel as though he got a deal are you won't have any come back business which is crucial in this business.

As for policies and down payments I really never made my customers do that but I did give them a period to come and get the amp after I fixed it as some would leave them for months and I didn't want to be a storage facility but a repair facility.

[Pryde]

Insightful stuff, thanks for sharing. I am a one man show and primarily do instrument repair (trained luthier) and custom effects pedals. Many of my customers (and music buddies) also want amps repaired as there are really no good places to service amps here. I am certainly in the "hack" or relatively inexperienced group and do not claim to be in any way a proficient amp tech. My issue is not the repair itself but just a lack of experience troubleshooting all the various problems that arise.

However, I LOVE working on amps and can get a lot of jobs done (thanks in part to this great forum) with tenacity and a will to learn. It seams many of you here do this stuff with your eyes closed and likely had some formal training somewhere along the line. Please remember your sharing of knowledge is MUCH appreciated in helping us hacks find our way.

[marcumh]

I am glad someone brought up this discussion For the record, I list a "miminum bench fee" of $40.00 primarily as a decision making tool for the customer. I want them to know up front that if their $79.00 Behringer EQ is not worth atleast $40.00 to them, then it's not to me either. I do not have the luxury of screening at the counter.

But, my question is, how do you all deal with non-pickups? This continues to be my nemesis. My policy is 90 days after completion or estimate date the unit becomes my property. In truth I usually go out further than 90 days before I take it off the books. Depending on the unit, I may core it out, trash it, or put it out for sale.

[olddawg]

It varies from state to state. Last time I looked in CA they required you to send a certified letter after 90 days and then the customer has 30 days to respond I think. There is also the workman's lean and a lot of shops charge a storage fee of $4 a day or so stated on the invoice after 30 days. The point is usually moot though. Most abandoned units are abandoned and shops just get rid of them after a certain time. I used to manage a large shop. We got bit a few times because of the large military presence. Some sailor's wife would bring something in for repair and the guy would show up 18 months later asking where it was. Had to find a replacement a couple of times.

[Enzo]

We had exactly that discussion here. Look in the Music Electronics section if I recall. I think Bruce started the thread.

[g1]

This one? http://music-electronics-forum.com/t27338/
Also this one: http://music-electronics-forum.com/t33034/

[Randall]

Realistically, I think the guy who can't manage how to pick up his amp is not going to be the guy who can manage how to cause you legal pain.

[Enzo]

Oh buddy, there is an unwarranted assumption just waiting to bite you in the nose.


Simple as calling the attorney general's office in your state and filing a consumer complaint. He says, "I gave them my amp to fix, and when I got back from my tour they had sold it!!!"

[fredcapo]

My approach was in one case where someone wouldn't/couldn't pick up a repair was to offer to buy it from him. In that case it was a nice unit and he was happy to get cash and I got it pretty cheap.

[Randall]

The shop I'm involved with had a very clean, but problematic Hot Rod Deluxe that came back a few times. The last time the guy was frustrated enough to call it a piece of sh*t. The shop owner was tired of it and offered to buy it for $150. The guy gladly took the offer. Owner sends the amp home with me for the weekend as a 'project'. I play it, leave it on all day, and I can find nothing wrong with it, so I bring it back. Probably something else wrong in the guys signal chain.

[T9c]

I work out of my house for a large independent music store in town. I also work on friends and acquaintances gear, but I don't usually allow strangers in my home shop. Don't need the hassle. I pickup and drop-off at the store about once per week and lucky in that they pay me with a check for the completed repairs. Not as good an arrangement for the customer, but they can call me if they can talk the staff into giving out my phone #, and I don't mind. Back in the 80's-90's I had my shop in this store, and didn't like having to stick to their hours and hearing players wank loudly all damn day and all the unpaid interruptions and amp storage, customer calling, etc.

I get $75 bench fee and rarely go over that even for weeks of work on an item, but I'm pretty keen about what other shops will take in for repair and have charged an extra $25 a few times. either that or inflate the parts some to get the same result. I've been pretty careful not to charge more than 30-40% markup on tubes, since customers can find those prices all over the web and I don't want them to feel they overpaid.

For minor repairs, I charge depending on how much time it took for me to disassemble and reassemble the item. If it is a major pain, then I charge 75, if it only took 15 minutes, I charge 35. I also fix or try to, most pedals. I have to watch what the replacement cost is and charge an appropriate bench fee, usually not to exceed half of the item's value.

[Enzo]

I charge more for tubes than the online tube sellers, and I do not apologize for it. Yes, they can go online and pay less. They can also wait for the tubes to come, and they can pay shipping. If a tube is bad, they can deal with exchanging it or convincing the tube seller to do so. I am a repair shop, not a tube store. If someone beefs at my price, I invite them to buy tubes elsewhere and bring them in. I'll install them. But I won't guarantee them. And if they stick a new tube in the amp that is a bad tube, I won't cover any damage it might cause, like I would with my own tube.


My lord, look at what they charge for an aspirin at the hospital. You pay me my rates because I know what to do, I have the skill to do it, I won;t screw it up further trying to fix it, and I have the facilities to do the work. I also have the parts on hand for most repairs. If you buy a six-pack of Budweiser, a can costs about a dollar. Buy that same can in a bar, and you are charged $4. I suspect most of those folks who drink in bars every night don;t think in terms of overpaid for their beers.