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What would you charge?


bigcountry

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The local pawn shop is letting me do their repair work on their non-running power equipment. They gave me 2 Homelite blowers to get running yesterday. All they needed was spark plugs and some carb tuning. I'm thinking of charging them $10/hr. x 2 machines = $20, plus parts which is $3.88, and delivery fee of $2.50/machine, so that equals $28.88. They are trying to sell one for $49 and the other for $59. If you were in their shoes (and did not know how to fix them), would you be willing to pay $28.88 to get them fixed in order to sell them for $80 profit?
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Hmmm...i guess that since they have nonrunning stuff i'd offer them a 'nonrunning' price for them...fix them and sell them yourself...just my idea
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The probably "loaned" the poor sap they got them from $5 apiece for them. Your rates are too low IMO.
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Garden tractor shop time up here is around 50 bucks an hour, I say check what shop time is around your area and base it on that.
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It started yesterday when I took a weedeater to them to sell. I had no use for it and it was taking up space, and I asked $15 for it. They gladly gave it to me. Then they asked me since it was now springtime if I would be interested in repairing their stock of power equipment. They said a lot of people would "rig" the stuff to run while they were showing it to them and then they'd stop working after they bought it. They told me to "keep it cheap" and if it got too expensive to fix them, to keep them for myself. The last time I had a pro engine shop do my engine work (3 years ago), they charged me about $14 an hour if I remember correctly, because the bill was something like $35 to rebuild a carb and the kit was about $7 or $8.
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Should be charging more unless you are only doing a favor or wanting a case of beer so to speak. For work on that kind of equipment I have no problenm telling customers the minimum labor charge will be $25.00 US. Rather then frogging around and saying if this goes and if that goes, the price will be this or that , here is my minimum, take it or leave it and go back to Wally World and buy another. What ever you say the customer always remembers the lowest price regardless of what you said. I get 25-30 of these things every summer because of that understanding.
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See I don't have the market to sell these. I'm a senior in high school, and I do this on the weekends. My main purpose with this is to pay for my gas and have a little extra money for myself. I don't want to make them feel like they've been ripped off, but I don't want to feel cheated either. If they bring out more stuff for me to work on, I'm going to ask them to sit down with me and figure out an hourly rate for this kind of work.
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Keep an eye on how much you work and the total amount of money you get. If they decide to write off your expense, you might be stuck claiming the income and possibly the Social Security costs as an business.
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I'm trying to keep this little "hobby" as low key as possible. I don't plan on this expanding into a regular thing, just a little way to make a little gas money and spending money. That's why I'm trying not to charge pro-shop prices, because I am by no means a pro. I just enjoy tinkering on these things and I'm charging 1/2 of what a pro shop charges.
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I think that's the best course of action. I'm a year younger than you, and I'd be happy with $28 to $30. I wouldn't want to milk this shop for an extra $10 now when you might be able to land another $30 project from them later on. Bob's no-haggle labor policy seems like a good course of action in the future.
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The image button is not on my toolbar so I can't post a picture of the rate list I came up with. I decided that I would come up with a rate schedule for this stuff for them. All 2 Stroke Power Equipment, Weed Eaters, Blowers, etc.......$12/hr. All 4 Stroke Power Equipment under 8hp (Pushmowers, edgers, etc.).........................................................$18/hr. All Power Equipment above 8hp (All Riders)....................$25/hr. What I listed above is enough to cover my time, but not high enough to where they could call me a pro-shop.
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Do they pay you in green stamps?,no paper trail? That could afford you cheaper hourly rates. but 2.50 for deliverly won't buy much gas nowadays.
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Just a couple of things you might want to find out if you haven't done so yet. Are they going to claim your pay as an expence and give you a tax form for your income? I think you can make 400.00 a year before you have to report it and pay tax on it. You should check with a tax consultant to find out for sure. Do they expect a warranty or do they give your name out to the customer to call you if they have problems with an item you fixed? It would be a good idea to have this figured out in advance and how you plan to handle it. Good luck with your hobby!
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bigcountry, if your just looking for a hobbie to make a little money, while doing what you are doing keep an eye open for people getting rid of non working OPE. maybe you can fix it and every once in a while have a little tag sale selling them cheap to move them out,
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I don't plan to be charging anywhere near that much. I was paid in cash today for the blowers, I gave them a receipt, for my FFA proficiency records, and they gave me a fairly new Honda Harmony 216 Pushmower to fix. They said it wouldn't crank. I got it home, it didn't have a spark plug, and the fuel shutoff valve was in the off position. It had a Briggs air filter in it and it was not big enough. I put a spark plug in it and sprayed some carb cleaner in it and it fired up. It wouldn't stay running, so I kept spraying carb cleaner in it til it picked up the gas and it kept going after that. The self propulsion doesn't work though. Tomorrow afternoon I'm gonna call them up to ask if they want me to get it to pull itself and sharpen the blades. I am going to get the correct air filter for it too. They told me to stop working on it and call them if it took more than 2 hours to do, since my charge for push mowers is $18/hr. I love working on these things, but I just want to keep it small and simple. What I have done so far has been from the tailgate of my truck. My delivery fee of $2.50 is fine for now, because the pawn shop is only 4 miles from here. For riders though, I will probably go up to $5 for trailer usage. I am going to come up with a self covering type thing, where there is no implied or written warranty on work done. If it works when it leaves my possession, it will not be my problem once it is sold.
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