Guys, seriously? I have worked service repair and 30 years ago it bugged me the company charged the customer 5 times my pay per hour for my services. I worked outside on cement with my own tools for Pete sake! It occured to me upon reflection... A company must cover cost of business from the few revenue sources it has. Sales people will often gladly sell below cost to make their commission. Someone has to keep the doors open. Initial sales and parts sales are the only main income portals. Seldom if ever will repair after warranty make much if anything beyond own cost. Its the price of doing business or it would not be done at all. IMHO
Our lives are being priced to death. We think of food, clothing and housing, but you gotta have insurance, transportation on top of taxes and inflation requiring ever increasing budget adjustments. We see this in our own lives some, but it is an even greater impact to businesses. Part of today's bad business climate is the Fed.s inability to say what tax increases will be implemented in 2013 yet. Employee health benefits will be going up, cost to ship product, virtually every cost will likely increase. Prices are not always easily adjusted and it costs to do so in advertising and customer dissatisfaction- loss of sales adding to need for higher increase in prices! A good business must anticipate all this and front load for it as well as adjust over time.
A lengthy way to say there is a heck of a lot more than parts and labor cost to service repair pricing, but then you probably knew that.
Tom
