I was approached by a local housing association to price the maintenance of the grounds of a large property(s). The area is mostly occupied by elderly residents and there are around 20 houses in the scheme.
The question I'm asking is, a 24 hour call out service is applied on the application form and do you offer this service to your customers (domestic or commercial) ?
If a customer (domestic only, I have no commercial work) contacts me needing something done a.s.a.p, I would do my most to get the job done in a fast response to keep them happy. My business is built upon trust and reliability.
So, with the 24 call out service....
I would assume that it should be priced by hour? (I only price by job these days). So if my proposed price worked out to be roughly x amount per hour for maintaining the grounds. Would or should I add on an extra, say 25% per hour for the call out charge?
Thoughts? or your experiences in this situation.
Regards,
Mark
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Replies
if your available , cant go away / drink etc id charged every night ... i guess a gardener is not required after 10 pm or before 6am ??????????????
It sounds like a standard form question. When are you going to be called out at night? A grass emergency? I wouldn't worry about it, if a tree fell through the building perhaps, but these things would tend to get dealt with by emergency services, for example.
Price would be at least double the usual hourly rate for an emergency out of hours call out, PLUS incurred travel time (i.e. you won't be able to work the visit into a daily route if it was an emergency call out).
I sometimes joke that we do some of our best work in the dark!!! ;)
Gardens4u.co.uk said:
Think you need to understand the clients requirements before you can answer the question.
I have been on standby for call out for which you receive a fixed fee every night that you are available / required and of course that means you must be available to response to any callout so no drinkin! The standby fee is normally a token £50 and four hours labour min. at a very hight rate for any call out.
Other situations are for pro-active gritting as an example. These should be fixed price if possible.
Others are yes I will be available on a best effort basis and depending upon the actual emergency. These I would charge out at 100 - 150% hourly rate and have a min. charge of say 2 hours.
One of my customers is a large manor house with a lot of trees on the grounds, I have always been on call for emergency tree work during storms and gales should a tree come down in a dangerous place or near the driveway or the house.
I am paid a fixed price for normal work done there but in that situation I would invoice per hour and at double rate.
However in four years i've never had a call out. although we have had some tree damage they have not been in dangerous places.
After some thought in regarding where I would be available for 24 hour call out, I'm swaying towards the NO option.
Yes it would be good if a call out occurred for say fallen branches etc. and the money was there to be made.
However, for a 12 month contract, that would mean every day/night I would have to think of THIS job first before anything else. I know it would be very unlucky for me to be 'away for the weekend' or 'unavailable for whatever reasons' and then get a call out. I'd rather just say no to keep the pressure off. At the end of the day, I'm sure we all love our jobs. But we all have a social life...
if you are a one man band you cannot offer 24 hr cal lout and have a social life if you employ someone you have to pay them a standby fee plus wages if called out plus paid time off if out all night, provide generators and lighting etc if you need materials you will have to have them in stock (storage facilities) capital outlay for the materials try and find out what sort of work would be required for a call lout
David I haven't had a social life for 12 years lol :-D
David Benson said:
I would suggest leaving 24 hour call out jobs to those that specilise in it.
If you are working outdoors at night your need the equipment to deal with the job safely.
Many moons ago I used to be involved with these sorts of jobs, and the kit we had available allowed us to do the work safely and efficently.
This included trailer lighting towers, lots of men and vehicle back up.
Every bit of kit that turned up had a rate and so did the man power.
So for treework as this is what i did, you would have a rate for the landrover, another rate for the lighting tower it towed, another for the man driving it, then another for the grab lorry and its driver, then the treework crew.
As you can imagine its not cheap to get a crew out through the night, but you do get the job done safely and professionally.