Pricing Guide – Understand Our Service Fees – BEELEC

A valued service, based on a price-per-hour model is good, maybe vital in certain industries. However in many it can be open to abuse and manipulation.

Contracting is one of these such industries. Experience, and know-how can make for a difficult pricing-terrain. Imagine a scenario with an inexperienced contractor that takes twice as long to change a light fixture, as a more experienced contractor.

The inexperienced contractor at £20ph would cost £40 for the lighting change, where as the experienced contractor may charge £45ph, for a total job cost of £45. Why is the experienced contractor charging extra? Why even go with the experienced contractor? £40 is a better price than £45 after all.

But, consider the costs, the experienced contractor only requires a 1-hour maintenance window of down-time, all of a sudden that extra £5 sounds a lot better when you consider the revenue or inconvenience lost by an extra hour down time.

We could also consider the quality of work that the experienced contractor provides, this in itself may be worth more than the £5 saving from going with the inexperienced contractor, as their experience may lessen the chance of a range of potential issues:

• Fixtures being damaged
• Cosmetic damages
• Wiring faults
• Unsatisfactory codes
• Safety issues
• Incorrectly assessed risks

As you can see, there is more to a valuable service, than just how advantageous the pricing may seem.

The main co-ordinator for the cost of a job, isn’t the price per hour, but rather the value of the work done, appropriate to the cost being charged.

A correctly, risk-assessed, safely isolated and scheduled, prompt, maintenance window for a replacement, damaged socket outlet for example; may be a more complicated process than it may appear in a small commercial or office environment – managing down-time, mitigating risks and monitoring for issues during the maintenance works, may justify an initially hard to understand costing for what may seem on the surface to be a relatively simple process.

The main thing to consider in these situations is if the value of the works being performed and the contractors experience and procedures match the expectations for the works undertaken.

Does the price for this job sound very cost-competitive? Well then what corners need to be cut to be able to meet this price? If you as the customer are cuttings costs on the contractor – where does the contractor need to cut costs in the works to justify this price reduction? Is it in procedures, safety, installation design, co-ordination, functional requirements, validated and certified parts, like BASEC certified cables, and CE marked equipment from reputable manufacturers?

None of these mentioned points, even brings into consideration certain contractors who may charge by the hour, and elongate the work that they carry out – this is both annoying for the customer and costly, as well as frustrating to deal with. Some contractors may have different reasons for performing this shady, foul play – common among them could be, keeping a source of work available during work-droughts, taking advantage of unsuspecting, well paying customers or simply a complete lack of knowledge and skillset that elongates an otherwise already lengthy or costly job. 

It’s important to notice and avoid these types of contractors, or to advocate for a value based price model during the estimating stage to weed out any contractors that may make a habit of this kind of work. If you do fall in with contractors taking advantage of this pricing model, it’s important not to fall into a sunk-cost fallacy when deciding whether to see the job through to completion with them.