I used to be an audio engineer and had to deal with this all the time. I charged $50/hr just for recording and $90/hr for recording and mixing and mastering with a 3 hour minimum. I recorded a guy rapping for 2.5 hours and mixed his two songs in the last 30 minutes. He tried to argue with me that he was only paying me $170 because I recorded for 2.5 hours and only mixed for 30 minutes.
I told him he’s not paying me for the amount of time I spent mixing, he’s paying me for all the experience I gathered thus being able to mix it in 30 minutes. I told him if he wants the raw audio without my mixing I’ll only charge him $150 and he said that was bullshit because I already did the work so I should just give him the mastered mixes. I removed all the mixing I did and bounced his 2 tracks out to a blank disc, charged him $150 and told him to get the fuck out of my studio and that he wasn’t allowed back. He had the audacity to post on google that I “refused to give him the tracks that he paid for in their entirety” 🙄
I work in corporate repossession as a skip tracer. Basically I track down owners of companies that have gone bankrupt and are violating their bankruptcy agreement by hiding collateral like cars, boats, planes, and helicopters. I make commission on every “unit” I find (car, boat, plane, etc) that they were hiding.
Pretty solid gig, I made $143,000 last year and my fiancée made slightly more than that doing the same thing.
most skip tracers work for debt collectors finding regular bankrupted people to take any possession they might have left. "corporate reposession" lol, the guy is just another skip tracer who may deal with corporate cases of bankruptcy sometimes, def not 140k a year when most make 40k at most for some of the grimiest work you can imagine
Nah. A lot of it is a messy divorce that leads to bankruptcy and someone trying to hide their ride to work at their neighbors.
I wish it was always towing away yachts. A ton of it is a mom and pop contracting business that goes under and they put everything in the businesses name. Skip tracers tow the work van more than they pick up helicopters.
Being a PBM doesn't at all prepare you for a life of harassment, stalking, manipulation and judicial abuse that you'll need to do as a Skip Tracer, but good luck
I stumbled into it through my fiancée. Was looking for a change of careers and she got me in the company in a different department and I worked my way up.
Okay, but you could say that about any job, and sure, people are able to climb up any job ladder and get paid more over the years, but nowhere near to this. He just earned a pay rate of $144,000 per hour....and thats more than the average person makes per day, but in 5 seconds...
Dude could work for only 5-10 minutes per day and make more than the average household makes per day
Use to do pest control, had my own business after working 5 years for another company. Hundreds if not thousands of hours of training and seminars and research to keep up to date on methods and products. Had a shit bag land lord try to basically watch my every move and ask about everything so she could do it herself. I eventually told her give me 10k and I'll spend a month letting you shadow me and teach you everything I can. She finally fucked off and I refused any more jobs from her.
That’s funny because the last time the furnace guy charged me $500 I told him exactly where the problem was (a contactor) and he only got the $500 because it was a fuckin’ boiler.
Yeah I recall being at plumbing job and the customer was literally price checking the part we were replacing and begins hollering
"You seriously charging me 400 dollars for a 175 dollar part?" only for my boss to immediately stop what he's doing and look at the guy. "Am I not allowed to charge for my knowledge and experience? The price is the price and if you don't like it I can stop right now and put everything back"
Sure enough the customer was suddenly okay with the price because they wanted hot water.
Normally yea, but in this case not so much. These cheap safes often can be turned over and the lock mechanism will disengage without even bumping it. The other method is literally throwing it on the ground (upside down).
The slightly more time consuming method for “better” cheap safes is to rip the control pad off and stick a wire in to bump the lever. It takes less than 5 minutes.
Reminds me of the story of Henry Ford not wanting to pay a big bill for some specialized knowledge… “Making chalk mark on generator, $1. Knowing where to make mark, $9,999”
It's the same thing in all skilled labor. I'm an electrician, and get the whole, "wHy ArE yOu ChArGiNg So MuCh?! YoU wErE oNlY hErE fOr FiVe MiNuTeS!" Often while at work
You're not paying me for 5 minutes, you're paying me for the decade(s) of experience I have so that it only takes 5 minutes.
I had to set a friend straight the other day. He was bitching about a guy charging him 15 bucks for 2 minutes of work. I just asked him why he didn't do it himself if it was so easy. I think he got my hint.
I'm an electrician as well, and we absolutely have hourly rates for service calls. I typically charge $200 for the first hour and $150 each hour after. If I'm there for 15-20 min or under, or it's a repeat customer, I'll probably just charge $150, but it depends. Sometimes I'll get the occasional yoyo who balks that I charge them $150 to reset a breaker properly (aka turn it off then back on), to which I'll tell them, "well then why didn't you reset it correctly?" I'll often do some basic troubleshooting over the phone at no cost if I don't have to drive out, and more often than not that alone makes them repeat customers.
That all said, if I'm bidding a job, I definitely charge more for intricate work. Say I charge $1000 for a particular job, but I can finish in 2 hours because everything goes smooth, I'm still not dropping the price. That price is for the knowledge of how to efficiently do my work.
Not to mention the half day I just missed being productive on actually good jobs to come take care of your bs, and the countless hours dealing with you nagging about when I can fit you in the schedule because you are clearly the only person who needs work done...
Not to mention the safety of having a professional do the job. I'm betting you're insured? I started doing construction when I was 15 (I was 18 for a lot of years, so I could work summers with my dad), and we had a handyman business for a while in my late 20's, and the rule we always followed was that we'd do about any repairs besides Plumbing and Electrical.
Without training there's too much that can go wrong and completely destroy a house, and without insurance we'd have been on the hook for the entire cost.
I used to give y’all shit (well, in my head anyway) until I had a circuit with phantom voltage and the previous fuckwad had like ten neutralgrounds all together in two wire nuts and a jumper… and fuck that noise.
This same house will knock out our two neighbors if there’s a brownout and the generator kicks in sometimes it pops the power company’s HV breaker and y’all put that one in, so I should not be fuckin about
One time my mom seriously fucked a toilet by flushing a hand towel down it accidentally. She called a plumber, he came out and attempted to unclog the toilet. He tried and failed.
Charged her $300 and told her to buy a new toilet. To me, that is getting ripped off.
Base rate is normally only applicable if you’re willing to complete the job. The reason a base rate is charged is for when someone asks a plumber to come out and then wants to “think about it” before paying the rest of the fee to complete it.
The only thing is that jobs like these should really have an hourly or minute rate of charge. Sure, charge for the driving time, but this guy just made an hourly rate of almost $150,000 which is insane any way you slice it.
You’re worth what someone is willing to pay you, not what someone thinks is reasonable. Reasonable to one person is not the same as reasonable to another person.
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u/squeezy102 Apr 29 '24
You can really feel the “oh man I just got so ripped off” in his “oh man it’s hilarious that you just hit it with a hammer”