Callout Fees

In the past I dropped the callout fee and instead just had a charge for
travel time. No-one complained about this as it is a legitimate charge. If
you have to return to the same job as a follow up or on a continuous basis
say over a few months, do you apply additional callout fees for each visit?

What is a callout anyway. Unless the customer can bring the job to you, you
have to travel to the job.

If you insist on retaining the callout fee, then add a travel time charge to
that.

Cheers.

I charge workshop-to-workshop time, with a minimum.  The minimum is higher after
normal business hours.

I believe it is far more equitable.  Your 60-minute client would probably prefer
this.

You have not taken into account vehicle operating costs and petrol cost.
I would want at LEAST as much for travelling as for working on site.

MrT.

If you normally work only in your own workshop, there is also time
taken in working out/packing what tools/parts/manuals etc are likely
to be needed for the worst case of the prospective job being travelled
to , and time spent loading/unloading same from vehicle.  

Hi and Thanks for your thoughts to everyone,

It is a case that the travel time,  should be charged at the same rate as on
site time.
SO will they pay?    Lets see..

The other thing we have too, is a lot of stock that is sent back and forth,
so there is more time in packing and tracking goods.

Thanks again.
Allan

I for one charge the same rate for travel as on-site labour.

In the case of Ken's valid point about loading/unloading of gear, I keep a basic
kit in the service vehicle.  Any extra stuff I have to load/unload determines
the booked start/finish times and is accounted for there.

If they don't like it, they'll probably find any competitor has a similar view
of the world.



If it is general stock/warehousing overheads, I wear them as a business
overhead.  I haven't had to wrestle with the case of it being dedicated to one
client.

Actually it should be higher, places I worked at charged a half hour
the instant you left the workshop plus travel time for a call out.

I think the charge-out model I encountered some years ago should be the norm
- I don't know all the goodies involved but here is what I remembered

1/ Business class air fare from anywhere in the world to site plus of cos
the return fare :)
2/ Hire car - BMW, Mercedes or similar
3/ Minimum 4-star accomodation + food
4/ Normal business hrs, thank you
5/ US$10,000 per day :) I think there was a minimum number of days one had
to commit to.

Yes, it was one of those industries where very large sums of money were
involved and the company had several of these consultants who were kept
quite busy :)

No, it was not in computer or electronic repairs :)

Yes, it sounds quite unbelievable but there you go :)