Who offers a 24hr callout??

[flyingsparks]

Which of you chaps (and any chapesses) offer a 24 hour emergency call out service? I work for a small firm in Devon and we dont have a call out service, however I was wondering how much work we would get if we offered it, and what kind of money I could expect to earn from doing it? I was thinking about speaking to my boss about us offering the service...??

Thank you!

 

[ericmark]

In a firm where we had clients who worked 24h we did offer service but as to call out it was very rare. However we did get quite a bit of planned out of hours work where we would work through the night and have things up and running in morning.

Problem was spares and we in turn had to find a supplier willing to give emergency out of hours service. And the hassle of getting things running again for morning including setting up generators for lighting as of course no daylight was a real pain.

We only did it to keep the lucrative business we had from same client during the day.

Now the working time directive makes it even worse. If you for example respond to an emergency at 2am you then need a 11 hour break before returning to work so you can't start until 10am and likely you had work booked to start at 8 or 9am. If you work with a continuous process then there are some allowances but very few jobs can be classed that way.

This means that the employer can end up paying the employee to sit at home on pay so the charges have to reflect this. Not so bad for in house electricians we had a rule where any call out after 4am was considered as early start so after completing call one would then start on normal duties but even this caused problems as if you start work before 7am it is considered as shift work which also has reduced hours to day work.

So the sole trader may be able to do call outs but for people who are cards in then it is very problematic.

 

[flyingsparks]

Thanks, very imformative post. Perhaps Il give it a miss then!

 

[kevindgas]

as said above the problems occur when you can't get parts needed before monday/next day
it becomes very difficult to justify your out of hours rates when this happens.
we no longer offer the service, but would go out if we were confident that it was a straight forward fix but we always advise that we may not be able to fix if parts required

(we do elecs and gas)

 

[flameport]

For domestic work, there isn't really any need for 24 hour callout. Most faults can wait until the next day.

 

[jeepmadmike]

We offer a 24/7 service, but it is extremely rare to get new custom from it, but a lot of our existing customers have plant which works odd shifts etc I cover Devon / Cornwall and somerset and usually have only one call a month for night time breakdowns compaired with a couple a day during "normal" hours 6.00am-7.00pm

basically I do it because it's good for business relations with customers rather than anything else, biggest snag usually is some days you end up working 5-9 rather than 9-5

 

[Lectrician]

Which of you chaps (and any chapesses) offer a 24 hour emergency call out service? I work for a small firm in Devon and we dont have a call out service, however I was wondering how much work we would get if we offered it, and what kind of money I could expect to earn from doing it? I was thinking about speaking to my boss about us offering the service...??

Thank you!

We offer a 24hr call out service, mainly it is our commercial customers that use it. The occasional domestic. We currently don't have enough staff to 'fully man' a call out rota due to downsizing through lack of work, so if we recieve a call for a call out and cannot do it for some reason, it is passed onto 1 of 2 of our friendly sparks in the area. We can usually alway respond.

Where in Devon do you work?