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Mr. Stahl I would take it as a compliment that they are complaining about your fee. Otherwise, it would mean that you are charging too little. Furthermore, I think it is comical that we go these rounds when other professions don't think twice about "upping" their fees. Take for example the plumber who came to fix a leaking pipe at my house. He showed up and fixed the 1/2" water line at the meter, took all of 2 hours and he left me with a $600 bill. Yes I complained, but what are you going to do. He is the one licensed and I was the sucker out of town not able to fix my own pipes. If anything $160 is too cheap. Yes people will complain, but how many plumbers do you hear about going out of business? Can't say that I have heard of one.
And to add onto that, this notion that we shouldn't divulge out hourly rate is somewhat convoluted. Lawyers, plumbers, electricians, engineers all have hourly rates and they get them. Heck Architects get a percentage of the entire project. Some jobs don't require an hourly fee, (I typically do the Fixed Price Agreement for most of my work, with a fixed rate for work outside of the scope) but most do. Why not have a rate sheet attached, or better yet charge by the hour as most professionals do. That means we would be charging way more than 400-500$ for a little lot survey. That might cover the field crew time on the site.
"It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money....that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot---it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better."
----John Ruskin
The contractor's must be of a different breed where your working. Around here we (the collective "we" meaning surveyors no matter the company) give a lump sum for staking the project as planned but then we give out our hourly rates for anything that comes up unexpectedly. They ask for that so we're not negotiating for a week over additional curb/gutter, a few light poles, what ever. Bigger items will be negotiated lump sum if the time provides for it but most contractors want to now what an hour or two of our time will cost them before saying "I've got two additional catch basins, can you stake that and just bill me what you want" then seeing a bill for $5000 come across their desk.
Mr. Tompkins,
I agree with everything you said for the most part.
However, it is a perfectly fair question to ask that plumber, for instance, why he charges $600 for a two-hour job, and another plumber only charges $200 for the same job.
I don't dispute the quote you mentioned necessarily either. But there is a third scenario where a person pays too much for a job and gets a substandard product or flat-out ripped off. Maybe some people are just sick and tired of being cheated out of their hard-earned money and simply want to ask what the return on their "investment" is.
I know Mr. Stahl well enough that he wouldn't underprice his work. But from a consumer's standpoint, it is hard for the client to know what he is getting with land surveying.
> Surveying is a highly unknown business to the average consumer, and on top of that many of them already think they know. Educating them is a much better approach than treating them like they are inferior for wanting to understand.
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> If they are just price-shopping, they will go with a cheaper guy anyway. But on the other hand, why would they even ask, if they already found a lower priced surveyor, unless they are legitimately trying to know what value you might be bringing to the table at your price.
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> Sorry, I can't provide you with what words you should use, but I would filter through the responses and eliminate any that might be offensive...
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> I'm not on board with the rude or flippant answers. Be respectful. I've had work from other professional services before and got at least three bids. It's a legitimate question to wonder why someone is at $150 when another service provider is at $1500. I want to know that the higher-priced guy isn't just out to rip me off. Think of it as if you were in their shoes, and didn't see the difference in the two services and wanted to ask the higher-priced person what they were bringing to the table.
Sorry, but the reality of professional practice in the private sector is that it is always a losing proposition to be in the position of justifying your rates. The basic question amounts to: "Why do I have to pay you anything to do this work?", which is what a chiseler would ask. The straight answer is "that is what after ___ years of experience I have found to be a fair rate that will keep me available to serve the public. Anyone charging less is by implication either lacking experience or planning to make money some other way out of the deal.
I understand that scenario and agree that it is a fair question. When I read the question I heard an inflection in the voice of the person asking the question that is all to familiar. It is true that they have every right to know the difference.
Part of my response is also considering our current state of affairs. We are just now getting out of the recession and that fear that struck all of us to the bone for the past 5-6 years and instilled in us a hyper-sensitivity to price is going to be hard to kick.
As far as 'getting ripped off'. It's all about perspective. Sometimes you can't help that.
Perhaps I should have prefaced my comment with it being more from the client's perspective than from the private-sector land surveyor's perspective. I would have thought that was self-evident in the context of what I was saying.
There are many good chiseler's in the business of taking other people's money and, in my opinion, it would be better to be straight up than act like everyone you talk to is somehow inferior to you. But maybe that is just a difference for me personally. The more superior surveyors can probably get away with being flippant and condescending to everyone they talk to. 😉
"The vast majority of my clients have also worked with many of those surveyors who charge less per time unit than my company does but have been more satisfied with the overall value of the services I provide."
