$160 please.! I saw what he did, he replaced a couple of fuses under the playfield..
$160, reasonable. People really do not value other people's time.
Takes it back to the point about honesty. The tech should not have falsely claimed it was 20 minutes work, when it was really 5 minutes. He should have said it is a $150 callout fee, including upto 30 minutes repair time, plus materials. Then you would not feel cheated being charged $160.
Honesty would also include showing the owner what work was done. The owner would probably the call back the same tech for future more difficult repairs, instead of feeling cheated and going to someone else in the future.
..Hey 'Rowan' are you still there? (Rowan started this thread)
I wish people were as reasonable as they preach but my experience generally shows otherwise. I recall on many occasions keeping a production machine down for an hour or so when the problem was solved within a couple of minutes. Why? Because when I have presented a min call out fee, in my days, for $130 I'd sometimes get abused. Remember most tech's don't get paid work for 8 hours/day, it still takes time to drive to you and go back to base, they have invested in the necessary tools, and most importantly, they have experience and skills that has taken years to attain in which enable them to troubleshoot your problem quickly. I do understand there are rogues who charge heaps too. Thats what the thread is trying to find out. But I'd rather a good tech at $140 call out done in 1 minute than a hack who spends 3 hours taking things apart that has nothing to do with the problem give you that heart to heart speech that you bought a lemon and need to off load the game asap and btw that'll be a $100. I have heard of such cases in pinball.
So cost should not be the basis to evaluate a person as being a rip off artist. Referrals is the secret when I consider tradies, techs, doctors and the like, but you figured that out, hence the thread.
I can't help you with melb techs as most of my fix its are done by me now, but pcb's I recommend Beaky in a heartbeat.
