Another Reason Why I Should Just Do It Myself.

I got a repair call for a customer that was (thankfully) located close to my house.  When I got there and took a look at their system, I knew that it crashed and needed to be replaced.  The customer was understandably not happy about it especially because their one year factory warranty ran out just two weeks prior.

I called the owner of the company I was contracting out too and told him the system was dead and needed to be replaced.  After negotiations with the customer it was agreed that he would replace it with a refurbished model for $500.  I didn't think that was too bad of a deal at first but when I found out that he was going to downgrade them to a processor that was the lowest model that Avaya made it raised a red flag.  I need to point out that it's not my customer therefore it's not my business what this guy charges.

To make a long story short the 'refurbished' processor was bad and I had to drive back to his house and pick up another one.  That's the only reason that this job took two hours.  The labor involved two screws and plugging/unplugging five modular cords (those cords that go from the phone to the wall jack).  It took me 15 minutes to put the new system in and another 15 to program it.  

Now back to the why I got a red flag.  He charged this guy $275 labor!!

Let's do the math

$500 Total

-$50  Contractor charges (This is what I made off the job!)

-$0    Parts (there is no way he bought this as a factory refurb, it was used, period.)

$450 Profit

*sigh*

Small Business Adventure

So I'm doing contract work for a couple of telecommunications companies and I didn't realize how much I missed doing that type of work. The bad thing is, even at $25/hr, I don't get paid shit for it.  Let me explain. I live in the Phoenix Metro area and that is a whole lot of area to cover. I'll get called out for a simple repair that I can bang out in under an hour. The problem is I would drive 45 minutes to the job, have no more work for the day so I end up driving 45 minutes back home. That's an hour and a half travel time that I don't get paid for and about 60+ miles that I don't get paid mileage. Do the math and I end up losing money on the job. That sucks. To add insult to injury the guy I work for questions every. Little. Thing. I. Do. Not only that but I've been called back to jobs that I've done because "something isn't working right". He then lectures me on the stupidest things about it. I've been in this trade for almost 16 years, I know what I'm doing. Anyway I get out to the job site and the problem was customer created. Vindicated bitch!

Now the whole point of this post is to say, I've decided to go into business for myself.  Lets do the math on a job I did. The customer was charged about $1300 for parts and labor on a system install I did. I wired five locations, mounted the equipment, programmed the switch and did a little customer training... all within five hours. I zipped through it! The total cost of the equipment was probably around $300 for (allegedly) refurbished equipment.
$1300  Total Cost
- $300  Equipment
- $125  Contractor Charges (this is what I got paid folks!)
$875 Profit
Granted I know there is overhead, etc but it can't be too much because he runs the business out of his home.
Well I can run the same business out of my home too.  Adding the Contractor Charges and Profit together you get $1000.  That would be mine.

Yes, yes, I know I'm over simplifying it but the $875 difference in profit is enough for me to deal with running a one man business.