This reminds me of my favorite consulting story. It is told about Henry
Ford and Thomas Edison and involves a time when the electrical generator
at the plant that was building Model T's broke down. Ford's engineers
could not get it working and after a couple of days, Ford called Edison,
who had designed and installed the plant, to come and fix it. Edison took
the next train and went directly to the factory. He tinkered around with
the generator for about an hour and then turned it on. The power plant
came back on and was as good as new.
Later, Edison send Ford an invoice for $10,000.00 for fixing the
generator. Ford complained that this was highway robbery for one hour's
worth of work. Edison answered him by simply saying "Oh, I see that you
wanted an itemized invoice". He then sent him an invoice with two line
items on it. One line item read "For 1 hour of work to fix the generator
at the Model T factory, $100.00". The second line read "For knowing how
to fix the generator in just an hour, $9,900.00".
It is said that Ford paid the bill without any further questions.
Rich Loeber
Kisco Information Systems
http://www.kisco.com
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sjl wrote:
Jerry wrote;
I don't do consulting now, but, when I did, there was one customer
that I charged a 2 hour minimum for support calls - even if it took only 5
minutes.
I did this because they kept calling with stupid questions that could be
found
by reading the documentation (which I wrote) and expecting me to answer
these questions gratis.
The president of the company, when I explained the change to him,
agreed that it was fair, reasonable, and necessary.
He did, however, want these calls itemized;
he used it to raise hell back at the office, not at me.
Jerry -
I took on a small client in the early 90's (Colter's BBQ in Dallas, running
JDE on a S/36) that indicated they only needed occasional on-site support.
I explained to them that if I ever have to come to their office to do the
work, that there would be a mininum charge of FOUR hours of billable time.
They called me with a payroll emergency one day. I left my regular client
(BlockBuster) and drove to their office, fixing the problem in about 1 hour.
I sent them an invoice for 4 hours. The manager called me back the
following week, telling me that he was NOT going to pay me for 4 hours since
I was only there for an hour.
I explained to him that I had indicated a minimum charge of 4 hours when I
took them as a client. He insisted that he was only going to pay for the
ONE hour that I was on-site in their office. Finally, I told him: "Don't
worry about paying this invoice. I'm firing you as a client. I'm not
interested in doing any work for you in the future."
I then gave him the telephone number of another Dallas consulting company
(owned by a guy that I considered a crook) and told him to call them in the
future for any assistance...
- sjl
midrange.com
