« Still no word | Home | And we come to the cl… »

Ugh

10 09 09 - 20:09 That's all. Just Ugh.

"Oh, I should have a loaner car back after twelve"

At 2:00- "Your rotters, caps, wires need to be replaced. And your spark plugs are bad too. With labor, $352. The tow was $75. Still no loaner for you yet."

At 7:30 (i.e. now) *twiddles thumbs*

Amazing how little you can accomplish in a day if you have no will to do anything. I got a comic penciled, colored and shaded, big deal.

The dealership is less then two miles away from me. Down my street .1 miles. Right Turn and go .8 miles. Left Turn go 1.6 miles. That's it. For this I was charged SEVENTY FIVE dollars. For that price I would have PUSHED the dang thing there myself.

I did get two actual job calls though, a cleanout and a machine to totally reload a daughter gave her mother. She needs more RAM too. Just a pity I can't actually GET there. But at least my business hasn't fallen off the face of the earth. It never ceases to amaze me. One week I'll do hardly anything, another I'll get 6 calls a day. It doesn't make sense. Shouldn't there be an even, steady flow of calls? Computers don't get together and say "okay, this week we'll all break! Muhahahaha!"

Come January I'll probably raise my rate to $40 an hour and put that extra $10 into a "buy a new car fund". I don't like to do it, I mean, I think $30 an hour is pretty reasonable for what I do, but when a tow service charges me $75 to drive two miles, I have to wonder if I'm not being smart.

I looked up "average price computer repair" on google and got rates from $50 to $100. Which I think is really unreasonable. Trouble is, the small paper I used to advertise in no longer has any "computer repair" ads, so I can't judge what average rates are in my area. Guess I just have to be sensitive to the "market" so to speak. I get very few calls that hang up when they hear my rates, and really all my business is referrals anyway, so they probably already know because they've been told by whomever told them. If I raise my rates to $40 and suddenly get people not leaving messages, I'll know it's too much.

But honestly, my mortgage keeps going up (because of taxes), gas is going up a bit again. I started out in 2003 at $20 an hour. Is doubling my rate in 7 years too much? I do know a lot more now then I did. My average job time, casting a quick eye over the last couple of months of figures) seems to be an hour. How much of that car repair is going to be just labor? When I had it inspected and my shifter repaired it was $90 parts, $329 labor. Doesn't list the hours. Even at three hours, that's $110 an hour! Now, of course, it's not the same comparing a car dealership to myself, they have to offer health insurance to their employees, insure the building, etc. etc. but is my time any less valuable? What about getting health insurance for myself? I've been lucky so far, but how far can I push it?

I suppose too, a new vehicle is way more expensive then a new car, so it's easier to justify the cost of getting a car repaired, even if it is a couple hundred dollars, whereas I could get a mid level PC for that kind of money. And have the same problems again in a month because I learned nothing, but still...

In total I'll have spent $1,100 dollars on car repairs this year. Huh, looks like it was slightly higher last year, of course, year 'aint done yet. That $2000 would have made a nice down payment on a used car. Of course, I made that $2000 in increments, and I can't be without a car a week (*grumble*) much less two years, but it still stings, considering I only paid $6000 for it. Or was it $8000?

Anyway, to sum up, looks like I've pretty much lost the entire week, so I'm really hoping they get it fixed tomorrow so I can at least finish the four off maybe saturday and have a great week next week.

Yeah. That'll happen.

Hey mom, if I don't get to Grandma's tomorrow, you know where I am. 1) still stuck at home or 2) Trying to make up for lost time.

Current... oh, who cares