The parts mark-up
20 per cent, printed on the invoice next to what the part cost. Every workshop has one; almost none says what it is, which is why customers assume it is worse than it is.
An argument, not a policy
Why we publish our rates
Every number on this website could be kept off it, and the trade generally does. Here is what that costs the person paying, and what publishing costs us.
Three reasons are usually given for not publishing a rate. Every job is different. It is not about the hourly rate, it is about the value. And people will compare us on price alone. The first is true and irrelevant, the second is a sentence about the seller, and the third is the real one.
Every job is different, and the rate is not the job
Of course every job is different. That is why this website publishes an hourly rate and a RANGE OF HOURS against each piece of work, rather than a price for a repair. The range is the honest part: an intermittent fault investigation is two to six hours, and the reason it has a long end is that some of them take that long. A single figure would be a lie in one direction or the other.
A price arrived at after you have explained yourself is a price arrived at from you
This is the part that matters. When the rate is not published, the number is produced after the shop has heard how far away you are, how stuck you are, how much the machine is costing you a day and whether it is harvest. Every one of those facts moves the number, and none of them is a fact about the work.
In this trade the version of that is specific and it is worse than in most: the customer frequently cannot leave. A combine in a cut field with rain coming is not going to a second workshop for a comparison, and everybody in the yard knows it. A rate that was published in February is a rate that cannot be discovered in August.
What it costs us
Two things, and both are real. Some people telephone, hear $185 an hour, and do not book — including people whose fault would have taken forty minutes and cost them less than the shop that quoted them a flat figure. And it removes the ability to charge more when somebody is desperate, which is a genuine loss of revenue and is the entire point.
What it buys
A conversation that starts at the fault instead of at the money. When somebody telephones having already read the rate, the first ten minutes are about what the vehicle is doing, which is the only part of the call that helps either of us. That is worth more than the jobs it loses, and if it ever stops being worth more, the honest thing would be to say so on this page rather than quietly take the numbers down.
Every figure on this site is an hourly rate multiplied by a number of hours, and both numbers are printed. A workshop hour is $145, an on-site hour is $185, a bench hour is $125 and an after-hours on-site hour is $265. Parts are at cost plus twenty per cent with both figures on the invoice. There is nothing else: no callout fee on top, no shop supplies percentage, no environmental levy.
The same argument, applied
Three other numbers most workshops keep off the page
The after-hours rate
$265 an hour, published in February rather than negotiated at a field gate at nine at night. That is the only honest time to publish it.
Where travel stops being free
twenty-five miles, and beyond it the road time is at the lower of our two rates. A vague "travel may apply" is a number somebody will decide later.
$145 a workshop hour · $185 on site · agreed before it starts
Describe the symptom, or just telephone
The symptom check takes about three minutes and gives you a written summary of which circuits would be tested first and why, with the hours and the published rate against each. It is an indicative scope and not a diagnosis — nobody has seen the vehicle — but it is a better opening than a blank contact form. If you would rather skip it, the telephone works.