Doing Charge
Note – Unless otherwise advised / agreed, the standard way of working with private residential or private commercial customers is via the Quoting method. For more information, Click Here
Doing Charge is an alternative charging arrangement to upfront Quoting.
Doing Charge is our standard way of conducting business when working with other plumbers, strata or real estate agents, or where significant investigation is required to locate the cause of an issue.
We do not generally work as Doing Charge for residential customers as we find majority of these customers want the assurance of fixed price quotes.
A doing charge job is where we attend to site, start a job timer, diagnose the problem and assuming the issue is fairly minor we would proceed with repairing the issue. Time, material and equipment costs are accrued and the customer is invoiced accordingly.
If the issue is complicated or the cost is likely to be more significant we would stop work once we had a clear understanding of the issue, discuss the issue with the customer, make recommendations on moving forward and may then quote for the recommended work or agree to continue as doing charge.
When you are invoiced for a doing charge job you will get an itemised invoice that clearly states all charges.
Charge Out Rates
Our doing charge rates are:
- Service Call Fee – (One off fee per job that includes no labour) – $111
- Labour per 15 minute increments (minimum 30 minutes per visit) – $45
- Apprentice (as per below) per 15 minute increments $28
- Note – Minimum charge for the service call fee and 30 minutes labour is $201
Non-Standard Business Hours Rates
After-hours and weekend rates are approximately double the labour and service call fee charges. Please confirm with the tradesman when booking in. 10% online booking discount does not apply to after-hours jobs.
Note – Standard Business Hours are between 7:30am and 4pm Monday to Friday excluding public holidays
Apprentice Charges
Apprentices are a vital part of the plumbing industry and without them, your future plumbing bills would be astronomical as supply and demand will drive the price up. It is our goal that our customers do not pay any more for a job to be completed regardless of an apprentice being on site or not. Our tradesman and apprentices are trained to monitor how productive the apprentice is on a job. If having a second set of hands is decreasing the tradesman’s time on site, therefore, saving the customer money we will charge the apprentice out at their full rate. When an apprentice is not 100% effective we will reduce their hourly rate accordingly to ensure that the customer is not at a disadvantage.
Equipment and Equipment Fees
Certain machinery and equipment will incur a fee. There are two reasons we charge equipment fees. The first is a machine or item has a great deal of wear and tear with every use resulting in a lot of ongoing maintenance, repairs and tool replacement. A great example of this is a drain cleaning machine that requires regular servicing and cable/hose replacements. The second reason equipment may incur a fee is where the equipment is expensive to purchase in the first place and is highly specialised in its field. This equipment will save the client money as it will reduce the labour time and will reduce the number of contractors required on site. An example of this would be leak detection equipment
Equipment and Equipment Fees
- Electric Eel $110
- Commercial Grade Jet Rodder $160
- Drain CCTV Camera with locator $160
- Leak Detection Equipment including Stethoscope, Line tracer and sonde and thermal camera – $210
Equipment caught due to failing customer’s infrastructure
In the unlikely event that our equipment becomes jammed or caught in a customers drain the customer is liable for the release of that equipment in a timely manner to prevent disruption to Water Tight Canberra. For example, if we attempt to clear a customers drain pipe that has completely collapsed there is a very slight chance the equipment may become caught or jammed. In this event, it is obvious that the drain needed to be dug up and repaired, despite the attempt to clear it, hence why we were called out in the first place. The customer is responsible for ensuring the equipment is realised. This would basically just be a permanent repair to their pipe work.
Please Note, in nearly 10 years of operating and where we currently complete up to 40 blocked drains per week, we have only had up to 5 occurrences where this has been an issue. At each occurrence, the customer was happy with the end result, a permanent repair in their pipework.
Material – Supplied and Removed
Supplied Material
All material is sold with a fair and reasonable markup. It is our goal to use our buying power to purchase items at a discounted rate so that after our markup is applied the customer is paying the same as if they had of purchased it from the plumbing supplier directly. Note – pending on the item this may not always be possible with certain special order items or with items that have a high damage/loss rate.
Material we have Removed
When working on a site, we often remove/uninstall material, fittings, fixtures or tapware from your existing installation such as when we are installing new fittings. If we have not been told otherwise, our tradesman will generally assume that the old material is rubbish and the owners do not want it to keep it and it will be disposed of through our recycling rubbish disposal system. The exception to this is large items that may incur additional disposal fees.
Supplier travel time
At Water Tight Canberra we are extremely proud of our carefully stocked vans that allow us to complete the vast majority of jobs without the need to visit a plumbing supplier. Our vans are restocked twice a month with a stock list we have spent considerable time developing to ensure that we have the most common items on board. Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to drive around with the entire Reece Plumbing shop on the back of our trucks and there will be occasions that in order to complete a quality job we will need to drive to the supplier to get parts.
If we run out of an item that is on our stock list, we will NOT charge for the travel time to the supplier to pick up the parts. If we require parts that are not on our stock list then the labour time to pick up parts is chargeable to the customer.
