I wanted to highlight our upfront, flat rate service department pricing. Most of our customers love this. If it takes us 1 hour or 5 hours to correctly diagnose and fix the job at hand, you pay the same flat amount.
The question I always ask is “would you pay someone by the hour to paint your house? Or would expect to know exactly what it will cost ahead of time?” And the answer is very simple. You would never agree to just getting charged by the hour.
And before our technicians break out the tools, our customers know exactly how much the job will cost and have the option of agreeing to or declining the work. On occasion someone complains when a technician finishes very quickly. “But how can you charge that much when the repair took only 15 minutes!”
Two things to keep in mind.
- Every price must account for overhead and travel time to and from the job as well time spent diagnosing what the issue actually is, and then doing the work.
- You are not only paying for the part and the labor involved, but for the technician’s expertise on what part to change.
It’s similar to a doctor’s visit. Most of us at some point have paid a hefty doctor’s fee merely to be prescribed some bed rest and a couple of aspirin. But when we made the appointment, we didn’t know the problem was only a minor ailment. What we really paid for was the doctor’s ability to tell us what was wrong. And for the confidence we had in that doctor to be able to identify a serious medical condition if that’s what it was.
Likewise, our technicians are professionals whose most valuable skill is correctly diagnosing a problem before they go to work.
