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Flat Rate or Time based repair rates preferred?

I know we have a lot of repair professionals here. What are your opinions on having a flat blanket price for labor on all repairs on a device (Fix your phone $75+ parts) vs. having a rate sheet (Battery replacement .25 hours + parts, logic board 1 hour + parts) for different types of repairs.

Edited to add better examples

Blanket price:

Fix your iPhone $50 + parts

Rate sheet:

iPhone repairs

-Front Panel $100

-Battery $25

-Rear Panel $50

I'm seeing more flat-rate on the labor regardless of the problem in electronics repair, but in the automotive world, I'm used to having rate sheets, so all jobs have a standard time, and you multiply your labor rate against.

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flat rate..no one likes surprises!

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Agreed--use flat rate.

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To clarify, by "flat rate" I mean ALL repairs would cost $50 no matter the difficulty or time involved. By using a rate sheet, I mean that all jobs would still be quoted up front, so no surprises from a standardized rate sheet, similar to an auto dealership.

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ok... I mean flat rate as in like a menu....chicken chow mein 4.50, extra bean sprouts add 50p. In my repairs LCD screen is 20, digi is 30, both together then it gets a discount. I have all prices worked out in advance so even if it takes me longer to sort out a software problem it's still 20 for my time.. I hate going to a mechanics and getting charged for labour! and it takes 5 minutes to put in oil and they bill me? Our latest repair was 1100 and they had the car for 4 weeks trying to sort out the electrics..the part cost 250, the rest was labour and taxes. Not happy with that system :-(

by

Agree with everybody on here. One needs to know how much a repair cost up front. the problem with that system will obviously be the trouble shooting. Upfront prices only work for replacement and not diagnostics.

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I do this on the side, so flat rate. I go by set flat rates for the repair in question. Let me use the HP DV series recovery rate.

  • labor: 15$. Labor is flat rate in this. No per hour nonsense.
  • Material cost: Whatever it costs out of pocket. They can choose how to do it at this point.
  • If a flashdrive bought for them personally, cost of it and then some. If they supply it it costs nothing. I can't be bothered with DVD media anymore. Everyone has USB and flashdrives are dirt cheap.
  • Cost of flashdrive(16GB): 20$; cost to client 32$. 15$ profit on the flashdrive.

Back in 2012, I had no certifications to my name. I worked on it during Highschool and I walked out with a tech school certificate of completion and one of the certs I'm planning out.

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Eric Essen will be eternally grateful.