Charges

There are many things in this life I don’t comprehend. Among them are charges for a house call from various “skilled” tradesmen. Just recently, I had the air conditioning repaired. I understand that there is knowledge required to perform these tasks, certainly more than I possess. I have no problem with paying an hourly rate and for the supplies that are used. However, there is one area that gets me to wondering - why is there a charge for coming out to the house. Am I supposed to take the unit to the shop or to the home of the repairman? When were you last paid just to show up at work?  

I believe that I know how these charges got started. A long time ago when the television was new and the repairs were made either in the home or at the shop, if you took it to the shop there would be a bench charge for the diagnosis. It appears that this was to insure that the work of diagnoses would provide some income for the repairman. As an aside, as an alternative, if there was something wrong, you could call the shop describe the difficulty and he would suggest the tubes to be tested which could be done at a variety of locations and you could make the repair yourself for the cost of the part (oh for the good old days). 

To my thought process, when someone comes to the house for a repair or a diagnosis, he should be reimbursed for the work that is done, not just for the visit. The point now is these “skilled workers” seem to be taking advantage of a situation that leaves certain repair requirements no alternatives. You are at the mercy of what has become a quite expensive proposition. They may reply that you don’t have to call them, which is true, however, often some knowledge and the proper tools are all that separate them from you. They do have, essentially, a monopoly with the unions setting rates for a specific region. If you look in the right area, there are less costly avenues depending on the difficulty. One experience was when a retired woman, living on Social Security, had a leaky faucet and the plumber, who was a block away, charged her $113.00 to change a cartridge in the faucet that at the time cost about $7.00 and took all of 10 minutes work. Pay for knowledge or what may be considered unscrupulous? 

This also goes beyond the home repair, it goes to large business. You have to pay the electric company a fee just for being available to you and the same applies to the gas companies. How often have you gotten paid for just being available for use, but not functioning? Even if you don’t use any of their energy, you must pay for them being there. Here is a write off of business that you may not be aware of. Transportation of energy is given a write off of a certain percentage for evaporation. How it is determined is uncertain. 

The bottom line is that through a process unknown to myself, charges are created merely to get more finances from your pocket to someone else. It is amazing that we place the almighty dollar far ahead of concern for others. It is disappointing to have people with the sole focus of monetary gain. Possibly, you can purchase a friend for yourself or a conscience?