Although it was so long I had the lawyer shorten it to what he said was an unenforceable single page, our original contract specifically spelled out that it was the customer's responsibility to take care of tree growth. I don't think we ever charged anyone for it but we normally didn't move equipment either. We used to have a check box on the install sheet for an estimate of how long service will be available before tree growth would cause issues. I was probably the only one that used it.
On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 8:32 AM, Adam Moffett <[email protected]> wrote: > Good points. However, there's no contention over charging for bullet > holes in the equipment (AFAIK). Really it seems like nobody disagrees that > if the customer broke it, the customer should pay for it. > > The specific case that's causing disagreement is tree growth which > requires us to move the antenna. It's probably nobody's fault. It's > conceivable we could have put it in a poor location the first time. It's > also possible the customer pressured us to put it in the poorer location. > Most likely nobody could have known what was going to happen with the trees > a few years down the road. Trees pretty much grow like weeds around here > by the way....if you stop mowing a field it eventually becomes a forest. > There are lots of other circumstances where fault isn't clear. > > What if you had a major competitor who doesn't typically charge for > service calls? > > > > > > If all service calls are chargable, but you waive where it's your fault, >> or otherwise indicated, you're an awesome business doing right by your >> customers. >> >> If you roll for free, then charge when you find the customer's been using >> the radio for target practice, you're a greedy bastard who's out to squeeze >> every last penny out of innocent, hard-working regular folk, who just made >> a simple mistake, aren't smart with all that computer stuff, and didn't >> realize that electronic equipment works best without holes in it, and >> shouldn't be punished because YOU didn't explain that to them. >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Adam Moffett >> Sent: Friday, May 22, 2015 1:31 AM >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: [AFMUG] charging for service calls >> >> There have been some discussions at the office recently on this topic. >> One camp feels that the default action should be to charge for all >> service calls, and make an exception if necessary. The other camp feels >> that we should reserve the right to charge for a service call, but we >> should only do so if the problem is somehow the customer's fault (like >> hitting the cable with the weed whacker). The discussion in our office is >> only about fixing internet service by the way, not about fixing computers >> or other customer equipment. >> >> I was wondering what the peanut gallery thinks today. >> >> >
