TOT: Call out charges?

[The Medway Handyman]

What business are you in Bill?

[The Medway Handyman]

I have a minimum charge of £30 to cover jobs up to half an hour, but no firm appointment is made - "I'll be there some time Thursday afternoon, can't say exactly when" instead of "I'll be there at two pm".

Indeed. But like many small business's I'm scared to increase prices in a recession. I may increase in Jan to £45, then £22:50.

[The Medway Handyman]

Like it!

[Clint Sharp]

In message , The Medway Handyman writes

It doesn't matter either way, someone will have a dig. We used to charge

95 for the first hour and 45 for every extra hour (I will add that we were 20 cheaper than any competitor and lax about timing the hour), that got you an engineer within 24 hours during the week or next business day at weekends wherever you were in the UK.

I regularly got pulled by customers about the 'call out' charge even though we didn't call it that. When we did start calling it 'call out' and split the charge into the two components we got pulled about the hour's labour. You won't win them all no matter what you do.

[tim....]

[jsabine]

Common practice though. I'm sure most people who do it don't realise it's in breach, and (as a consumer) I don't have too much of a problem as long as it's clear prices are ex-VAT. Clarity is, of course, another issue.

Anyway, I don't take the bookings, I don't quote the prices. I merely get to tender apologies where there has been confusion. Ho hum.

[jsabine]

Aye. I don't quote the prices though ...

I'm not sure whether ex-VAT quotes are borderline dishonest in terms of trying to appear lower, or whether they show admirable clarity in distinguishing between what is the price, and what is the tax.

[John Rumm]

Agree on the less competitive bit, but I would hardly call VAT an admin nightmare. Given you probably already keep all the receipts and invoices anyway, accounting for VAT is fairly painless (especially on a cash accounting[1] basis). You can even use on of the flat rate schemes if you want to avoid needing to actually account for it in detail.

[1] Firms with turnovers below a certain threshold (was about 400K IIRC, but may have changed) can opt to only become liable for the VAT only after they have actually been paid, rather than when they raise their invoices.

[John Rumm]

You can think of him as uk.tech.digital-tv's answer to Pepys'

(Oh and he does some aerial rigging in his spare time it seems ;-)

[Andrew Gabriel]

There was quite a big crack-down on it a few years ago, when it was getting out of hand.