our opinions: ABOUT SERVICE PROVIDERS
In The Comfort Zone
Why do I feel like they’re ripping me off?
The real reason why a service call is so expensive.
BY BRETT HOBSON
CEO Comfort Experts
AUGUST 2016 PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
E
verything at your home
consists of moving parts.
And those moving parts sometimes break or they wear out.
Your garage door, your pool,
your air conditioner and heater,
plumbing systems, electrical
systems, you name it and it can
need a service call. It sometimes seems like the cost of that
service call is outrageous when
the tech spends such a short
time fixing whatever is wrong.
Many people feel like they
are being ripped off whenever
somebody comes to their home
or office to fix anything.
The cost of service calls can
be explained fairly simply.
A great service tech makes
about $50,000 a year. At a
busy service company they
would like him or her to make
1,000 service calls a year. So
that should be about $50 per
call per hour, right? According
to an MIT study, employees
cost a company 1.25 to 1.4
times their salary to employ.
That covers things like insurance, employment taxes, time
off and sick leave. The service
104
industries also have a higher
incidence than most of injuries
and disability cost because of
the physical nature of the work.
So now our service call is up
to a minimum cost of $62.50
to $70 per hour. And since you
want the service person to have
what they need with them to fix
whatever is wrong in one visit,
they pull up in a truck or van
costing at a minimum $30,000
with an additional $10 to
$20,000 of parts and tools to
do the job at hand.
I mentioned earlier that a
great service tech makes at
least $50,000 a year, but I’d
like to mention how hard it
is to find that great tech. The
average in the air-conditioning
industry is only two to three
years at each company. For
some reason people tend to
think that the grass is greener
elsewhere. So we spend a lot
of time recruiting and hiring
people. And it’s not just our
industry. According to Forbes
magazine, the number one
hardest job to fill in 2015 was
that of skilled trade workers.
Mike Rowe of the television
program Dirty Jobs is my hero
in furthering the discussion
on the need for skilled trade
workers. He appeared before
a U.S. Senate Committee
on Commerce, Science and
Transportation in 2011. At that
time there were 450,000 job
openings in trades, transportation and utilities. The gap has
widened even more now. He
espouses the view that I share,
that skilled tradesmen and
women are no less important to
civilized life than people who
attend college and beyond.
So if your son, daughter,
nephew, neighbor or young
friend has an aptitude for
working with their hands,
encourage them to look into
skilled trades. College is not
the only route to success, especially for those that don’t enjoy
the rigors of a classroom or the
thought of four years or more
of school. There is something
to be said for fixing the things
in our society that are broken,
especially those things broken
in our very own homes.