Quote:
Originally Posted by lutzTD
dont worry, after they hire the $25/hr guy to do it for them they will pay you $85/hr to fix it later 
when I was contracting I would handle it two ways, flat rate them or figure out what the rate they wanted to pay and set hours of effort accordingly. |
A funny story from years ago.
I did a lot of SQL Server DBA work, usually the very special heavy lifting stuff the local PC guys couldn't handle.
Got a call about a company their Line of Business app was down.
First I knew from chatter, the owner was slooooow pay, many times waiting for the collection agency before he'd cough up the dough.
But I went in quoted 150/hour, 8 hour minimum 16 hour max problem solved or no pay, and 8 hour check on ARRIVAL.
Didn't hear back, ok. 4 days later I get a call from their regular PC support consultant, they brought in another guy (I knew him) for about half what I quoted. He not only didn't solve it, made it worse, potentially lost all their data.
So I call the owner, he was frantic. I told him 350, with 8 hour gaurantee pay up front, no maximum hours, final payment within 7 days.
I told I knew he was slow pay, and don't normally take slow pay customers, I also told him I was booked up NOW, so I was going to have to rearrange several appointments.
He ranted and raved and said OK.
I walked in, was handed a certified check for the 8 hours gaurantted.
Well 8 hours later I had things stabilized, the data was recovered (almost all), they were able to begin using the app and continue on. I put in another 12 or so hours cleaning up the mess and setting things up so it shouldn't happen again.
When I gave him the final documentation on what I did, he asked how many hours walked out and came back 5 minutes later with the check. I hadn't even invoiced him yet.
We enjoyed a good relationship from then on, at my regular rates, including a fair amount of general computer and application support.
He paid very promptly from that point on, including the other techs he had in from time to time.
He also referred a bit of business my way, I actually gave him discounts sometimes as a thankyou.
He learned sometimes cheap is cheap.
He did tell me he figures he lost 5 to 10k per hour the plant was down because the app wasn't running, it managed all the scheduling of production through the plant.
We still go out to dinner from time to time, he's semo retired now.