Consumer choice! Home repair edition.

Here’s the backstory, you’ve got a mad guy, real mad. Puts his foot through a door? Ow. This door is made of acrylic and aluminum pet screen. Guy needs to get the door repaired. So what’s he to do? Take it off, but the materials and do it himself or take it in the shop, or maybe if you’re just feeling blasé you can have the service come to you? Sure that seems reasonable.

###Cost to do it yourself:

• $80 bucks for the 96x48 acrylic sheet
• $24 bucks for a roll of aluminium pet screen
• Labor couple of beers an a bucket o’ chicken (mmm).

###Cost to have a skilled laborer come out

• $350 - $450

##Alright now comes the rant

I like how mechanics do it. You’ve got the parts cost. and then the labor cost. My issue with many manual laborers is they wrap it all into one so you don’t know exactly what you’re paying for. Fabrication work is cheap (machines to cut stuff to size… so you already know theres egregious markup on the retail stuff) a business isn’t going to do retail but they’ll charge you retail materials cost. I have less of an issue paying a worker for his time than I do for being shafted for material costs. My paying someone to fix something is in my mind the absence of the homeowner wanting to do it themselves. So you offer a service that is intended to be convenience and you should bill as such. Bill explicitly for the workers time and materials. Even better if you tell the customer how much the worker gets versus the company — thats a bit unreasonable I got it. But man would I pay more if they were just explicit about it.

Wow the customer with your costs for parts! Make it up by charging more for time or offering add on or bundled services. Give the choice to your customers.