Your hourly rate is fixed, and your time is always paid. You bill for a minimum of 30 minutes for a diagnostic. Paid up front. If they choose to have you continue the repair, the remaining time from the diagnostic (if any) is applied to the part. Time and materials.
If they balk at that, they’re not good customers and they are invited to move on to the “next” repair shop.
The line in the sand is between marginal customers and word of mouth business. When the economy crashes, people will fall over themselves for repair.
Side hussle: You ebay, flea market, yardsale and dumpster dive for stuff to fix and sell it on auction. Finding old MCM sets and restoring them with actualy parts, inside and out cleaning, record players, tape decks. You can buy damaged stuff a LOT cheaper and flip it for profit.
Yeah I feel I’d need to be starving to actually want to deal with people. I’d have to let them in my house, I don’t have a separate workshop. Or deal with shipping. Wrapping things to survive continental shipping, as opposed to personal dropoff, is something I’ve learned is expensive.
Dealing with people is the real work.
Set rules, have them sign off on the rules.
Your hourly rate is fixed, and your time is always paid. You bill for a minimum of 30 minutes for a diagnostic. Paid up front. If they choose to have you continue the repair, the remaining time from the diagnostic (if any) is applied to the part. Time and materials.
If they balk at that, they’re not good customers and they are invited to move on to the “next” repair shop.
The line in the sand is between marginal customers and word of mouth business. When the economy crashes, people will fall over themselves for repair.
Side hussle: You ebay, flea market, yardsale and dumpster dive for stuff to fix and sell it on auction. Finding old MCM sets and restoring them with actualy parts, inside and out cleaning, record players, tape decks. You can buy damaged stuff a LOT cheaper and flip it for profit.
Yeah I feel I’d need to be starving to actually want to deal with people. I’d have to let them in my house, I don’t have a separate workshop. Or deal with shipping. Wrapping things to survive continental shipping, as opposed to personal dropoff, is something I’ve learned is expensive.
Yeah, it’s not easy. If you have a car you could offer pickup/dropoff, but that’s not without danger. Maybe take out insurance.