Ben_t, well said. Nothing is done for free, worry about out the door price.
When you go to a mechanic, you’re basically paying for 2 things - knowledge & experience to diagnose a problem and the skill to fix it. They are closely related but the diagnosis may take as long as the repair.
Ultimately, the mechanic needs to pay for his/her time. S/he can explicitly state the diagnostic fees or bury them in the repair costs but they need to be covered somehow.
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I certainly think that the mechanic and shop is entitled to a diagnostic fee. The mechanic’s time is valuable and the shop.has an investment in equipment that needs to earn money.
Now I am not a mechanic. I am a research design consultant and statistician by training. I have been cheated out of my time and it is not a happy feeling. I got a call one day from a manager of a firm that made beverage cans and wanted to know how to calculate decay of the can from the beverage it contained. I spent a couple of hours explaining why one would use the harmonic mean and how to set up the statistical package to do the analysis. I should have said up front “Here is what I charge and the meter starts right now”. Even better, I should have said that if you want my services, I will have you sign a contract before I begin the work. I lost a couple of hours of my time that I could have applied to my own research, which was important for promotion. Had I had a formal agreement, I could have noted on my vita that I served as a consultant to company XYZ.
When I was a graduate student, the mainframe computer went down due to a failed bearing in the data storage drum. A doctoral student came to me and said she was desperate. She needed an analysis of covariance for her dissertation and her defense was coming up. This was before desk top computers. I told her my charge per hour and she agreed. I went to work on a Frieden mechanical calculator, as we didn’t have electronic calculators in those days. I completed the job and the woman refused to pay claiming the job could have been done for free on the computer. I should have asked her for 50% of the charge before I started the work. I was also a doctoral student and had my own work to complete. I contrast this with another doctoral student that had a quick problem about the size of his sample. He had a committee member who kept insisting he needed an even larger sample than the 1000 he had randomly chosen from a population of 3000. I worked the mathematics in less than 10 minutes. He paid me $50 on the spot which was big money back in 1971. He said he had a job offer for $30,000 at another institution if he completed his degree. A year later, when I returned to campus to defend my dissertation, I ran into the man. “I thought you were going to a job at XYZ” , I said. He replied, “I was, but was offered more money to stay here”. Keep in mind that $30,000 was a big salary in 1971.
A believe a professional should be paid for his/her time. A mechanic is owed that diagnostic fee.
I value technicians who have expertise in things I do not. I am quite willing to pay them for their expertise if I need them.
@Triedaq I agree; diagnostic time is billable. I have performed many maintenance and reliability audits on large industrial plants. This takes several days to a week, depending on the size and complexity. My template has 5 areas and a total of 300 applicable questions.
My standard charge out rate used to be $800 per day plus expenses. I would have to charge more than that now. I also did a large airport for $5000 flat fee, but with that arrangement things tend to drag out.
In all cases the owners accepted my findings and the blueprint plan for achieving world class standards.