What is unreasonable about explaining what overheads I and every other professional electrician have to contend with? Hopefully this will help the OP understand why they are being quoted what they are.
Consumer unit certification rip-off?
- Thread starter niceboy
- Start date
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My last two for little one bed flats. Materials <£200, labour £250 inc certs. Total £225 each.
My last two for little one bed flats. Materials <£200, labour £250 inc certs. Total £225 each. This year.
Including changing the shower cable and switch.
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...because it is not what the OP was asking - which was:
whether he should be charged £300 for two bits of paper which are a legal requirement for the work and unavoidable and included in the cost.
Does your MoT cost £4.85 for the work and £50 for the certificate?
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Squeaky floor board, to fix the squeak is £50.00.
£1 for the nail and £49 to know where to put it.
Andy
£1 for the nail and £49 to know where to put it.
Andy
I can’t imagine it costs much to actually do an MOT it’s just looking and a bit of testing, but I’d imagine having premises, ramps, testers, training, registration to be an MOT centre as well as filling in and logging the report is where the majority of all the cost is incurred so your breakdown probably isn’t far off.
What seems to be 'unreasonable' is that you appear to be talking as if customers are, or should be, 'double charged' for overheads.
The hourly/daily/whatever rate charged to customers (by self-employed individuals or companies) for services are much higher than (commonly at least double) the 'income' of those doing the work, since those 'rate' figures include a substantial component to cover the overheads.
One either charges for the actual amount of 'worker time', at the rate they will be paid, and, on top of that, charge for 'overheads', OR else one charges a 'rate per worker time' which includes a component to cover the overheads. In practice, nearly everyone uses the latter approach and, whatever else, one cannot (should not
) do both!If you wanted an 'income' of about £40k pa, and therefore were charging customers, say, around £21 per hour (corresponding to around £40k per year, for 48 weeks of 40 hours), then you could reasonably expect all of that as 'income' and thus expect to talk about, and charge for, the cost of your overheads on top of that.
However, you indicate that you charge £37.50 per hour (assuming 8 hour days) - so that, in comparison with that £21 ph, you are charging all your customers about £16.50 for every hour you work to cover your overheads. If you did work just under 47 weeks of 40 hours (to take into account your 8 days of 'lost work'), that would be that you were charging customers nearly £31,000 per year for your overheads, which I strongly suspect is 'a little higher' than the truth!
Kind Regards, John
Actually I don't think RF is too far off the mark, I'd maybe question some of the figures but not by more than a few percent.
£5K to get to that stage, and don't forget this is only the testing package and not the initial qualifications!, sounds very realistic to me.
I meant he was being unreasonable to the OP.
That's a very close variant of the 'story' I've often heard about the highly experienced but retired 'old-timer' oil refinery engineer who was 'brought back from retirement' to help solve a problem of a non-functioning refinery which was costing the owners millions every day in lost production.
Having spend a few minutes wandering around the refinery, looking at, listening to and prodding things, he took a hammer out of his pocket, hit some pipe/valve/whatever, and everything started working.
When questioned about the $2,000,002 bill he submitted, he explained that it represented $2 for hitting the pipe/valve and $2,000,000 for knowing where to hit it!
Kind Regards, John
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I'm not arguing with the numbers (and there's clearly a good few other things which he could have included, but didn't) - but, as I've just written, they are part of his ('charge-out') 'hourly rate', which will be a lot more than the hourly rate his pocket sees.
Kind Regards, John
As I've just written, I think it is somewhat 'unreasonable' to/for anyone, to overlook the fact that one's 'hourly rate' charged to customers includes a substantial provision to cover overheads, in addition to one's actual 'income'.
Kind Regards, John
Actually I don't think RF is too far off the mark,What seems to be 'unreasonable' is that you appear to be talking as if customers are, or should be, 'double charged' for overheads.
The hourly/daily/whatever rate charged to customers (by self-employed individuals or companies) for services are much higher than (commonly at least double) the 'income' of those doing the work, since those 'rate' figures include a substantial component to cover the overheads.
One either charges for the actual amount of 'worker time', at the rate they will be paid, and, on top of that, charge for 'overheads', OR else one charges a 'rate per worker time' which includes a component to cover the overheads. In practice, nearly everyone uses the latter approach and, whatever else, one cannot (should not
If you wanted an 'income' of about £40k pa, and therefore were charging customers, say, around £21 per hour (corresponding to around £40k per year, for 48 weeks of 40 hours), then you could reasonably expect all of that as 'income' and thus expect to talk about, and charge for, the cost of your overheads on top of that.
However, you indicate that you charge £37.50 per hour (assuming 8 hour days) - so that, in comparison with that £21 ph, you are charging all your customers about £16.50 for every hour you work to cover your overheads. If you did work just under 47 weeks of 40 hours (to take into account your 8 days of 'lost work'), that would be that you were charging customers nearly £31,000 per year for your overheads, which I strongly suspect is 'a little higher' than the truth!
Kind Regards, John
Items not yet mentioned are many, just a few of them include:
PLI.
Vehicle; purchase, road tax, insurance, servicing, fuel, tyres etc.
Office, it may only be a table in the corner of the dining room but it needs heat, light etc.
Time spent in the office preparing reports, estimates, invoices etc.
Time spent on accounts, tax return etc.
Incidentals; fixings, PVC tape, stuffing glands, cable markers, ferrules, etc etc etc yes this list goes on and on.
Did I mention tools yet?[/QUOTE]
Did you perhaps overlook what I recently wrote to you, namely ...
Kind Regards, john
Crossed in the post and as we seemed to be saying something similar I didn't bother commenting.Did you perhaps overlook what I recently wrote to you, namely ...
Kind Regards, john
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