13 SEER Splits not cooling!??!

[Noon-Air]

and you still haven't got them all

[Nathan W. Collier]

hi bob, i dont understand your question. yes i work for myself, and of course i have overhead (trucks, stock, etc.).

[Nathan W. Collier]

lol.....i suppose its possible (im 37).

[aka-SBM]

OMFG.....you are f****ng clueless..

[aka-SBM]

Nate...

You and I have known each other a long time....so trust me on this...

Chris is a hack, pure, unadulterated hack.

He is also a trolls, troll. He is trolling, and has no clue he is.

He thinks, and thats THINKS hes offering advice, and over the years, when called out on bullshit, he ignores it. You can give all the advice you want, and hes gonna ignore you...unless you offer to convert to Mormanism, drop to your knees and give a weekly tithe to the little alien mormon hes got under his magic space suit.

He refers to a job 3 years ago as recent, and cant tell you anything about real life situations, unless it starts out with: My boss and i.

He is trouble, and while there was a time I thought like you, that time is far past.

[aka-SBM]

To answer your question, before Stormin Moronic Fucking Twinky stepped in..

They cool fine, and if you are getting callbacks, you need new installers, or setup techs, or salesmen that actually know what a manJ and T is....

Besides..you WERE installing 14SEER years ago right?

[Nathan W. Collier]

i dont break up pay on driving/working time. hourly rate is hourly rate, both billed and paid.

dont put words in my mouth. you know nothing of my arrangements, as i never said anything about them. but yes, you can indeed. the largest refrigeration company in the country (over 700 employees) recently raised their rates to $65 an hour and they have better benefits than any other company i know of. with T&M you break even on the labor, and make your money on selling parts.

doesnt matter so long as all repair times are reasonable and WHEN THEY ARENT YOU EAT PART OF THE BILL. its the price YOU pay for hiring inexperience, and this is why new techs are $12-$15 an hour employees.

dont be an ass. im not "big" on anybody. im "big" on being helpful, and being a decent person to talk to. ive never said i agreed or disagreed with him or anybody else in here. my only position has been that theres no point in being an asshole needlessly, especially when he admitted his limitations ("im a new tech").

dont impugn my integrity, as i have not impugned yours. i said that i disagreed with flat rate billing on moral grounds. i did not say that you were a crook.

your thinking is messed up. if you have slow techs, you eat much of the bill and hopefully pay them accordingly. that said, i wouldnt hire or keep anyone like this anyway. im a small company with a small and very specific customer base (mainly grocery stores/distribution centers where refrigeration is critical).

how do you figure that? the last 40/5 capacitors i bought were nearly $12 each. i cropped them out of that receipt i posted to make the picture smaller, but if youd like i can upload the bigger picture.

[Nathan W. Collier]

ive seen it myself. one of the largest shops up here went to flat-rate and it hurt them BAD. i picked up many of their customers.

and when you run into more trouble than you expected, then what? you charge the customer more than you quoted him? for example, you diagnose my burnt up 25 year old compressor and you sell me a condensor. after you install my new condensor, you find that the fixed orifice is plugged. you now have to recover the refrigerant and open the system.

......i give customers a rough idea of what the overall repair will cost, but in the end i only charge them for exactly what they needed. i figure if i cant make a living being fair, then im in the wrong business.

[Oscar_Lives]

By "eating" much of the bill, it sounds like you DO adopt a flat-rate policy to me. By what standard do you determine what is "reasonable"?

[Nathan W. Collier]

......you never called me back, fucker. ;-) gimme a call when you have a few minutes (i know theyre tough to come by right now), i gotta go over a few things with you about what we were talking about but i couldnt talk about because the wifey was in the same room. :-)

[Noon-Air]

Actually in the bigger picture, a dual run cap should go for around $80 installed. (I can't help it if you don't charge enough) The increase in business is due in part to direct mail advertising, TV advertising, and a lot of help/advice from a bunch of folks on here and Service Round Table. Since I changed the way I do business, and learned the business of doing business, last year, my year end gross doubled and my net increased by a factor of 10!! After closing out my books in June, I had already surpassed my gross and net from last year. Point of information, and Nate, if you e-mail me privately, I will send you copies of some spreadsheets of before and after.... When I raised my rates and went to flat rate, I got more business than I can handle. I have gone from the brink of bankruptsy to making a decent living. I no longer have to watch every penny, and if I want to buy a new toy... no problem. I am about to do an across the board price increase..... I have not raised my prices since before Katrina, other than specific items where my cost has increased.

You can do what you want.... but when you get tired of working your ass off just "turning" money, there are several here that will help you learn how to "make" money. After all, isn't that why we are in business in the first place???

[Gideon]

DIMwit wrote: 30 Mb/30Mb hard drives.

================

Yep. Winchester 30-30.

[Stormin Mormon]

I suspect that good business men are always considering options. I missed a good chance to get some business education. Accounting and such. So, while I am learning AC skills, I'm also learning business skills.

As to protecting society from me, I'm much more concerned about folks who are hellbent and determined to do it the same old way. A man who is considering the big picture "Can we make it better?" is less danger.

[Stormin Mormon]

Worth asking if it's closer to a gas station. Fill er up -- well, that's a 04 Ford Econo, so it will be $75, please, flat rate. I don't know if that compares.

On a part change, there are so many variables. I could make a case for either pay rate. But when flat rate increases income, the effect is that it's a higher per hour rate. Not necessarily a bad thing.

[Nathan W. Collier]

"reasonable" would vary with each job. you know that, lets not waste time playing games. eating part of the bill is the price you pay for hiring inexperience. this is why they make about half of what a journeyman could expect.

[Al Moran]

The company I work for used to belong to the Service Round Table group. They saved the companies bacon some years ago, that's for damn sure. We no longer are part of them, but the reason we are not is in no way negative. I would strongly advise anyone that is using time and materials to use either flat rate or level pricing, your profit margin will increase dramatically. Our price for a dual run cap is 118.00 and people have no problem at all paying for it. There are always a few that bitch, but then they buy it because sweating in a 100 degree house is just not fun.

[Bubba]

Oh Christ! You're looking at Porn again. :-) Nathan. Flat rate is the only way. If you dont use it you should sometime at least try it. You will be very suprised. Also, remember. YOU do NOT eat your labor or anything else. The customer pays for EVERYTHING! (Only exception is if your company truely screwed up. Then you either fix the problem or get rid of the problem) Bubba

[Nathan W. Collier]

ouch. is that in addition to the cost of replacing the fan motor? on the job for the receipt i posted i charged $31.53 for each capacitor, and billed for the labor to put them in.

i charge what the local market will bare.

could this also be due to having been in business longer? i probably wont have a million dollar gross this or next year, but i have shown steady growth since starting on my own over 2 years ago.

i would certainly be interested in looking and i do appreciate some of you taking the time to explain how you do things, but in the end it boils down to what your local market will bare.

thats just it, im making what i consider to be a very good living. if i werent, id do something else.

[Bob Pietrangelo]

Did you do that by being a low ball contractor, what is your overhead per hour?

Why would you install a condenser without a new coil?

What if your rough estimate is a couple of hundred less than the actual bill?

Nathan, i am not trying to bust your stones, I am just debating the benefits of something you do not believe in. I have been using flat rate for many, many years without hardly any complaints. I cover my overtime and try and make a 15% net. My four experienced guys make over 45,000/ year, and get 40

• 52 with great bennies, health, dental, vision, life, vaca, personal days, short and long term disability. If I priced T&M my customers would chase me away by my hourly rate, when I charge flat rate and include all of my costs and my net profit, customer doesn't mind. My OH is 5/hour @ 60% billable time.

When I was on my own working out of the house, I charged half as much because my OH was about half. But I still made a great slary and a nice net.

Customers that are just shopping by price and not quality, longevity, and experience are not my customers, nor do I market or cater to them. I ask customers looking for estimates if they are looking for the cheapest price, if they say yes I let them know upfront they do not want to deal with me. I am $1-several K over most other contractors, and survive solely on referrals. Even my installs are flat rated.

The one big company that went out of business after flat rate and you got alot of their customers, may not have gone out of biz because of flat rate, but may have tried flat rate as a last resort after several other problems, you never know.

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[Bob Pietrangelo]

Nate,

What is yyour overead per hour? I am being curious, not argumentative.