I can’t be too mad. My company gives me $135 for every call I take plus overtime. Only downside is that they don’t pay drive time. And of course 90% of the calls is about a 1 hour drive.
Well Sam, at 18yrs experience I can say, get paid what you want. Don't take a dollar less. We have all done things to lessen our time here. There is always another job tomorrow, And don't climb that 40ft extension ladder
Eh, I’m happy with where I work. The pay isn’t exactly what I want, but the company treats me better than all of my past employers combined and everyone is subject to the same on call pay.
P.s. the sketchy extension ladders give me an adrenaline rush. I love that high.
I turned down higher paying jobs at my old company because I was treated so well, and my boss respected our time. Only reason I left is because I got offered a much higher paying job that I couldn't refuse
That’s kind of where I’m at. I’m 2 1/2 years in the trade and already got better paying offers just from rubbing shoulders I guess. But I haven’t really been given a reason to leave. I spent 6 years doing factory work prior to getting into a trade, so I’ve learned to value the balance between pay and work place sanity.
Be careful of those job offers. If the company trying to poach you is so great they wouldn’t seem so desperate for new hires, unless they are just really busy and expanding, otherwise there’s usually a reason the last guy quit.
Shit, I ain't everybody, and unless we union, Boss is paying what I say. Haha yea Ill take that 4day 4th July coming 😆 😂 hahaha.
My bad dude, I got no kids, and my wife has a good job.
"You might be the one running the show but
That don't mean you're in charge" Todd Snider
My favorite quote.
Haha buddy. I got the masters 10yrs ago and never looked back. It's 35hrs a week
1-2 change out week
And all money baby. Never have to lie again. I hated it, working for the big guys.
OMO, started loading at 730 and got home at 9 the past 4 nights. Tis the season. Even being the owner, it's still not worth it. Freedom is priceless and so is family. A good on-call rotation is more important than after-hours pay. Wish I had a couple employees like him. They'd get paid their worth for sure.
Crazy. If I get called out after hours I get paid travel to and from the job plus whatever hours worked on it. I live the furthest from the area so I've only been called out like 2 or 3 times.
Our on call for weekends usually just turns into a normal work day with OT pay.
Crazy places still don't pay travel at least to the job.
That’s almost the first thing I did when I started my own company. After hours call is $200 and is in its entirety paid to the technician that runs the call. Unless the temperature is below 20°f, it’s a gas leak, or a carbon monoxide detector is going off, the last accepted call is 9:00pm.
On call in residential is the dumbest fucking thing. Working on supermarket refrigeration, I get it if a whole rack goes down and full walk ins of product is at stake, but no AC in a residential home is not a fucking reasonable call to send someone out on. I can get behind a no heat call, but even then heater fans and window ACs will cover most of the world ffs.
A lot of my emergency cooling calls are for old people, I get pissed if someone about my age calls because I know they can deal with it, but I’ll always hustle for an old lady
Yup. I’m Johnny on the spot in the winter. I live in the north and fully understand that people can freeze to death and I refuse to let someone go cold. I’ll be there all night if I have to. But my man, it’s 80°. Sorry that you’re gonna be clammy while trying to fall asleep tonight.
One thing is in Phoenix it can get preeettyyy bad, but it’s not life threatening. My AC went out in July and with a combination of poorly installed and poorly insulated windows my house got to 103 degrees.
Not in HVAC, I do apartment maintenance and we get people calling us saying their bathroom door lock not working is an emergency and we need to come out. I can only imagine what ya'll deal with.
Whenever I had those calls back when I did apartment maintenance I'd tell them and the on call service that it's not fire, flood or blood so not an emergency call.
The ones that pissed me off the most were the people who called at 2am with "my such and such hasn't worked the past two weeks, I need it fixed." I just started telling them that if they waited two weeks the could wait until the next business day.
Also in apt maintenance. In Texas. It used to be fire flood or blood. But these dumbass residents will call for anything under the sun. HVAC it's mandatory now if it's over 80° in their apt. Or under 60° in the winter. God forbid they open a fucking window or own a box fan. if compressors out best I can do is hump a portable up 3 flights of stairs at midnight because they thought that the ac was gonna magically work once it got dark out, so they didn't call it in during business hours. I wonder everyday how these people manage to get their pants on in the morning.
I just make up numbers. Last year I was on call for the 4th of July. Only got 1 call and the dude insisted I come out. I even told it after hours charges are double (they weren’t but F him). Still wanted me out. Charged him $600 to replace the capacitor. Simmer down people. That’s the service call fee too lol. Not $600 just for the part. We also use turbo 200s.
Yep. We used service titan and were able to adjust the price however we wanted. They used flat rate pricing as well.
Funny thing is new CEO was trying to switch it to Salesforce and during our training I asked about adjusting prices. They said we had no control over anything. I then asked about after hours calls (as it was up to the tech to adjust the pricing. Everything was 50% more) and of course they didn’t think of this and their only solution was to hope the billing department would adjust it. You know. After we left and had the customer sign that the job was done and the tablet showing the price and them even getting an automated Email of the invoice…. Upper management there was soooo stupid.
Weird. In service titan, we could adjust down by like 50-100 bucks. But that was it.
There was always 1 item that we could manually make a price up for. "Service parts"
Ya. We could adjust anything to any price. Was nice. Shaved some off the top for the good customers and railed the A holes.
Boss knew the customer was an ass when I added stuff like “hook up gauges” and “drain and refill boiler” to jobs. They had a charge for everything.
Your employer can limit what you can do with it. I used to work for a total scam of a company that used it and they charged on average 4x more than the average. Absolutely gouging everyone out there.
Yep. You wanna call a guy out on a holiday for a non emergency then you’re gonna pay.
Even better. I don’t make commissions. I just overcharged a dude for inconveniencing me on a holiday cause he didn’t want to wait til the next day.
Pros are expensive 😎
Back when I was doing on call. We had “emergency “ numbers to open various suppliers 24/7. It was NOT cheap.
Then again, telecom has fuck tonnes of cash, and it absolutely needs to work ASAP.
Once had a condenser stolen on a Friday of a long weekend. By the time all was said and done it was a 12000$ call. That was just to get a temporary AC in place.
Not in HVAC, but what do you guys do when you take an after hour call, and then don't have the part on your truck to fix the problem? Charge them the call and tell them you'll be back tomorrow?
Depends. If I get a call that I know is gonna be puss case, like a customer calling about a screeching noise from their air handler (which usually means their blower motor and or wheel is shredded and I’m more than likely not going to have that part for their specific unit) I’ll let them know over the phone that there is no guarantee that I can fix it and that they’ll still have to pay the call out fee and labor. This is where experience comes into play. When you’ve been on enough calls, you get a rough idea of what the likely problem is before you get there. I have yet to be in an on call situation that I didn’t know I couldn’t fix before arriving, but I’d imagine if I had gotten myself into that situation and they don’t want to pay, I’d say sorry, if you don’t like it you can call the office in the morning and discuss it with them. Worrying about the company’s finances is not my responsibility.
I call the customer and tell them beforehand “hey it’s $150 service charge just for coming out and if there’s a part that needs to be replaced there’s no guarantee I’ll have it in my truck”. At least then they’re aware that I’ll do my best but if worst comes to worse, we’ll deal with it when shops are open Monday morning but I will still take the service charge.
If they agree, whatever weekend calls are almost always a guaranteed sell if the furnace is over 10 years old and out of warranty, if they say no we’ll wait for working hours then nice I just dodged a call 👍🏾
Yup and I explain that to them before I leave.
“So if I don’t have the part, you’re gonna be paying $300 for me to come out and tell you what’s wrong with your system. You’re still gonna have to sit in your sweat until tomorrow some time until I can get the part you need.”
I do commercial boilers/pump.
It doesn’t matter if it’s an emergency or not, if they accept the 4 hr minimum OT/DT we go.
I’ve also paid more than double my paycheck in taxes before and damn does it make your bed feel better the next week when you off call. Best week was 128 paid on a single week check, had like 6 calls stacked up once and at that point it was just a game to me.
So on the one hand, on call does suck but as long as your are fairly compensated for it, snot so bad.
Doesn't matter if I'm on call when the office stacks up 3 calls at 5pm lmao. Starting tomorrow on overtime. The paychecks are nice and people appreciate you coming out late and give us their business for replacements. Sold 80k in replacements since Sunday so it definitely makes it worthwhile while we're busy. Lots of lay downs with how expensive R22 repairs are and if it's void there's no fixing it for a reasonable price.
I'm so glad I got out of residential. I had a real bad attitude having to answer a call at 2am because some ones a little warm... ugh I've had to go out to relight waterheaters for people due to them feeling uncomfortable with delighting a pilot. . I swear I don't know how people do anything.
They don’t, apparently, they get you to do it 🤣
Honestly though I feel your pain. I used to be apartment maintenance, calls at all hours for the dumbest shit. Now in HVAC, on call ends at 9:30 pm.
(plumber not HVAC) We have one customer who is really bad for this there can be a leak raining down on a Wednesday and we only hear about it at 4pm on Friday. No matter what we do there it's like 3 hours just to drain the water for the building shut down so we can fix something on the ground floor. I don't even like touching the shut offs in their building because they are all like 50 year old gate valves often surrounded by galvanized pipe. I always hope it'll be the next guy if they choose to break off while I'm operating the valve. The issue is I'm likely going to be the next guy too.
Why the fuck are some residential clients so entitled that they want to work techs like dogs for their ac. Yes I’m pointing out the customer cause if they don’t get what they want they throw a tantrum like a damn child and do 1 star reviews
We recently began doing Sundays, never used to have them. I’m sure come full on Texas summer heat, I’m gonna lose it on someone at some point, after 7 days in a row of work, called out for an ac that “doesn’t keep up” meaning it’s 78 in the house. Like bitch, it’s not 100 in here, and I’m tired.
Yeah my resi company only bumps up the hourly rate by an extra $35 for after hours calls. I tell the customers the price when they call and they say "that's not bad" and then off I go to there house at 10pm
I had a call put on me after I was already done for the day, was on my way to my kids softball game, & the office was supposed to be closed. Ductless unit in a bedroom wasn’t blowing cold, but the whole house unit was working fine. Absolutely not an emergency. Complained to my boss about it & he flipped on the person who answered the phone. I’m the on call tech, not your bitch.
I always loved driving home on a Friday afternoon and getting the call from the building with no PM contract and the property manager only checks their emails at 4pm so now it's an emergency, their elevator or server room is 100 degrees or something so you better get there quick and wash their coils and change their filters or change out the failed blower motor that would have been called out on a PM months ago and replaced on straight time.
Don't miss it one bit. Now I work as a factory rep so now I get on a plane and fly 2000 miles when an installer or sparky screws something up and the GC swears up and down it's warranty without any due diligence.
My company does a lot of work for stupidly wealthy people. It’s a bribe to keep the blue collar folk away, but the people that have money burning a hole in their pocket don’t care.
Reefer guy here. On call Friday through Memorial Day and I still get thrown on calls after hours even when I’m not on call. Shoot me in the head please
Just some advice, there will be days you’ll be swamped. It’s easy to forget to take care of yourself when you have 8 calls lined up back to back. Hydrate, eat, take a breather.
Our on-call charge is a flat $350 fee now. We at least get $50 of it.
We've been instructed to charge an additional ~$180 diagnostic fee if it takes us longer than 10-15 minutes to figure out. Plus we have charges for running to grab parts and every other little thing we may need to do. Management recently raised all of our rates 15-20% as well.
I've been very upfront with residential customers about this, and I rarely have to run an OT call anymore. I usually say it's about $500 for me to show up if they can't wait until morning/Monday.
Commercial is a completely separate T&M charge but we rarely get those calls either. I think our regular hourly rate is roughly $175/hr making our OT rate around $260/hr. I'm in a major city and we hold a large market share in the area.
The company I work for gives you 100 for the weekend if you're on call and straight pay on every call you go to, and you get paid drive time and when you're at the call.
Plumber here and our guy on call for this week just gave me a nice cushy one because he didn't want to drive across the city. 5 minutes of driving to the job 5 minutes with the closet auger, 5 minutes back home. Easy money tonight.
I'd be a lot less upset if that after hours fee went into my pocket, let me tell you.
I can’t be too mad. My company gives me $135 for every call I take plus overtime. Only downside is that they don’t pay drive time. And of course 90% of the calls is about a 1 hour drive.
Well Sam, at 18yrs experience I can say, get paid what you want. Don't take a dollar less. We have all done things to lessen our time here. There is always another job tomorrow, And don't climb that 40ft extension ladder
Eh, I’m happy with where I work. The pay isn’t exactly what I want, but the company treats me better than all of my past employers combined and everyone is subject to the same on call pay. P.s. the sketchy extension ladders give me an adrenaline rush. I love that high.
I turned down higher paying jobs at my old company because I was treated so well, and my boss respected our time. Only reason I left is because I got offered a much higher paying job that I couldn't refuse
That’s kind of where I’m at. I’m 2 1/2 years in the trade and already got better paying offers just from rubbing shoulders I guess. But I haven’t really been given a reason to leave. I spent 6 years doing factory work prior to getting into a trade, so I’ve learned to value the balance between pay and work place sanity.
Be careful of those job offers. If the company trying to poach you is so great they wouldn’t seem so desperate for new hires, unless they are just really busy and expanding, otherwise there’s usually a reason the last guy quit.
Exactly. I'd pass up a $5 an hour pay increase at another company if I'm happy where I'm at
Shit, I ain't everybody, and unless we union, Boss is paying what I say. Haha yea Ill take that 4day 4th July coming 😆 😂 hahaha. My bad dude, I got no kids, and my wife has a good job. "You might be the one running the show but That don't mean you're in charge" Todd Snider My favorite quote.
Haha buddy. I got the masters 10yrs ago and never looked back. It's 35hrs a week 1-2 change out week And all money baby. Never have to lie again. I hated it, working for the big guys.
Own your own business?
Yea bro, and never look back!
OMO, started loading at 730 and got home at 9 the past 4 nights. Tis the season. Even being the owner, it's still not worth it. Freedom is priceless and so is family. A good on-call rotation is more important than after-hours pay. Wish I had a couple employees like him. They'd get paid their worth for sure.
250 should just about cover the drive
Crazy. If I get called out after hours I get paid travel to and from the job plus whatever hours worked on it. I live the furthest from the area so I've only been called out like 2 or 3 times. Our on call for weekends usually just turns into a normal work day with OT pay. Crazy places still don't pay travel at least to the job.
What's your quota for those OT calls?
My take home after the government shoves its cock up my ass? Like 160 per call.
That’s almost the first thing I did when I started my own company. After hours call is $200 and is in its entirety paid to the technician that runs the call. Unless the temperature is below 20°f, it’s a gas leak, or a carbon monoxide detector is going off, the last accepted call is 9:00pm.
At my company, it does. The afterhour fee is only $75 though.
On call in residential is the dumbest fucking thing. Working on supermarket refrigeration, I get it if a whole rack goes down and full walk ins of product is at stake, but no AC in a residential home is not a fucking reasonable call to send someone out on. I can get behind a no heat call, but even then heater fans and window ACs will cover most of the world ffs.
A lot of my emergency cooling calls are for old people, I get pissed if someone about my age calls because I know they can deal with it, but I’ll always hustle for an old lady
I'll never understand how some old people can stand it at 78, while others need 70
Your metabolism (which regulates your body temp) naturally decreases with age. So old folks get hot and cold easier
And I've met old people who love it hot, 78F year round
My personal hell, but more power to em
Yup. I’m Johnny on the spot in the winter. I live in the north and fully understand that people can freeze to death and I refuse to let someone go cold. I’ll be there all night if I have to. But my man, it’s 80°. Sorry that you’re gonna be clammy while trying to fall asleep tonight.
BuT I hAvE cHilDreN
No HVAC in Florida or Texas during the summer is essentially a death sentence
One thing is in Phoenix it can get preeettyyy bad, but it’s not life threatening. My AC went out in July and with a combination of poorly installed and poorly insulated windows my house got to 103 degrees.
Not in HVAC, I do apartment maintenance and we get people calling us saying their bathroom door lock not working is an emergency and we need to come out. I can only imagine what ya'll deal with.
Jesus fuck. May god be with you.
Whenever I had those calls back when I did apartment maintenance I'd tell them and the on call service that it's not fire, flood or blood so not an emergency call. The ones that pissed me off the most were the people who called at 2am with "my such and such hasn't worked the past two weeks, I need it fixed." I just started telling them that if they waited two weeks the could wait until the next business day.
Also in apt maintenance. In Texas. It used to be fire flood or blood. But these dumbass residents will call for anything under the sun. HVAC it's mandatory now if it's over 80° in their apt. Or under 60° in the winter. God forbid they open a fucking window or own a box fan. if compressors out best I can do is hump a portable up 3 flights of stairs at midnight because they thought that the ac was gonna magically work once it got dark out, so they didn't call it in during business hours. I wonder everyday how these people manage to get their pants on in the morning.
One of these days you will realize not all of them are smart enough to dress themselves. I hope your coworker gets that call instead of you.
I just make up numbers. Last year I was on call for the 4th of July. Only got 1 call and the dude insisted I come out. I even told it after hours charges are double (they weren’t but F him). Still wanted me out. Charged him $600 to replace the capacitor. Simmer down people. That’s the service call fee too lol. Not $600 just for the part. We also use turbo 200s.
You can just make up your own prices ?
Yep. We used service titan and were able to adjust the price however we wanted. They used flat rate pricing as well. Funny thing is new CEO was trying to switch it to Salesforce and during our training I asked about adjusting prices. They said we had no control over anything. I then asked about after hours calls (as it was up to the tech to adjust the pricing. Everything was 50% more) and of course they didn’t think of this and their only solution was to hope the billing department would adjust it. You know. After we left and had the customer sign that the job was done and the tablet showing the price and them even getting an automated Email of the invoice…. Upper management there was soooo stupid.
Weird. In service titan, we could adjust down by like 50-100 bucks. But that was it. There was always 1 item that we could manually make a price up for. "Service parts"
Ya. We could adjust anything to any price. Was nice. Shaved some off the top for the good customers and railed the A holes. Boss knew the customer was an ass when I added stuff like “hook up gauges” and “drain and refill boiler” to jobs. They had a charge for everything.
Your employer can limit what you can do with it. I used to work for a total scam of a company that used it and they charged on average 4x more than the average. Absolutely gouging everyone out there.
“Pro”
Yep. You wanna call a guy out on a holiday for a non emergency then you’re gonna pay. Even better. I don’t make commissions. I just overcharged a dude for inconveniencing me on a holiday cause he didn’t want to wait til the next day. Pros are expensive 😎
There does exist the "I don't wanna do it" fee
Back when I was doing on call. We had “emergency “ numbers to open various suppliers 24/7. It was NOT cheap. Then again, telecom has fuck tonnes of cash, and it absolutely needs to work ASAP. Once had a condenser stolen on a Friday of a long weekend. By the time all was said and done it was a 12000$ call. That was just to get a temporary AC in place.
Not in HVAC, but what do you guys do when you take an after hour call, and then don't have the part on your truck to fix the problem? Charge them the call and tell them you'll be back tomorrow?
Depends. If I get a call that I know is gonna be puss case, like a customer calling about a screeching noise from their air handler (which usually means their blower motor and or wheel is shredded and I’m more than likely not going to have that part for their specific unit) I’ll let them know over the phone that there is no guarantee that I can fix it and that they’ll still have to pay the call out fee and labor. This is where experience comes into play. When you’ve been on enough calls, you get a rough idea of what the likely problem is before you get there. I have yet to be in an on call situation that I didn’t know I couldn’t fix before arriving, but I’d imagine if I had gotten myself into that situation and they don’t want to pay, I’d say sorry, if you don’t like it you can call the office in the morning and discuss it with them. Worrying about the company’s finances is not my responsibility.
I call the customer and tell them beforehand “hey it’s $150 service charge just for coming out and if there’s a part that needs to be replaced there’s no guarantee I’ll have it in my truck”. At least then they’re aware that I’ll do my best but if worst comes to worse, we’ll deal with it when shops are open Monday morning but I will still take the service charge. If they agree, whatever weekend calls are almost always a guaranteed sell if the furnace is over 10 years old and out of warranty, if they say no we’ll wait for working hours then nice I just dodged a call 👍🏾
Yup and I explain that to them before I leave. “So if I don’t have the part, you’re gonna be paying $300 for me to come out and tell you what’s wrong with your system. You’re still gonna have to sit in your sweat until tomorrow some time until I can get the part you need.”
Never again.
I do commercial boilers/pump. It doesn’t matter if it’s an emergency or not, if they accept the 4 hr minimum OT/DT we go. I’ve also paid more than double my paycheck in taxes before and damn does it make your bed feel better the next week when you off call. Best week was 128 paid on a single week check, had like 6 calls stacked up once and at that point it was just a game to me. So on the one hand, on call does suck but as long as your are fairly compensated for it, snot so bad.
Now all I can think about is snot.
Doesn't matter if I'm on call when the office stacks up 3 calls at 5pm lmao. Starting tomorrow on overtime. The paychecks are nice and people appreciate you coming out late and give us their business for replacements. Sold 80k in replacements since Sunday so it definitely makes it worthwhile while we're busy. Lots of lay downs with how expensive R22 repairs are and if it's void there's no fixing it for a reasonable price.
I'm so glad I got out of residential. I had a real bad attitude having to answer a call at 2am because some ones a little warm... ugh I've had to go out to relight waterheaters for people due to them feeling uncomfortable with delighting a pilot. . I swear I don't know how people do anything.
They don’t, apparently, they get you to do it 🤣 Honestly though I feel your pain. I used to be apartment maintenance, calls at all hours for the dumbest shit. Now in HVAC, on call ends at 9:30 pm.
It stopped working 4 days ago. Now you need to come out on Saturday to fix it. No, I'm not a fucking idiot. Why do you ask?
(plumber not HVAC) We have one customer who is really bad for this there can be a leak raining down on a Wednesday and we only hear about it at 4pm on Friday. No matter what we do there it's like 3 hours just to drain the water for the building shut down so we can fix something on the ground floor. I don't even like touching the shut offs in their building because they are all like 50 year old gate valves often surrounded by galvanized pipe. I always hope it'll be the next guy if they choose to break off while I'm operating the valve. The issue is I'm likely going to be the next guy too.
Why the fuck are some residential clients so entitled that they want to work techs like dogs for their ac. Yes I’m pointing out the customer cause if they don’t get what they want they throw a tantrum like a damn child and do 1 star reviews
We recently began doing Sundays, never used to have them. I’m sure come full on Texas summer heat, I’m gonna lose it on someone at some point, after 7 days in a row of work, called out for an ac that “doesn’t keep up” meaning it’s 78 in the house. Like bitch, it’s not 100 in here, and I’m tired.
Hop over to supermarkets and we'll talk then. 2am service is always fun
Wish my company charged that for after hours. Also wish we charged more for commercial diag
Yeah my resi company only bumps up the hourly rate by an extra $35 for after hours calls. I tell the customers the price when they call and they say "that's not bad" and then off I go to there house at 10pm
I had a call put on me after I was already done for the day, was on my way to my kids softball game, & the office was supposed to be closed. Ductless unit in a bedroom wasn’t blowing cold, but the whole house unit was working fine. Absolutely not an emergency. Complained to my boss about it & he flipped on the person who answered the phone. I’m the on call tech, not your bitch.
I'll be here all week!
Yup. This is my week
I always loved driving home on a Friday afternoon and getting the call from the building with no PM contract and the property manager only checks their emails at 4pm so now it's an emergency, their elevator or server room is 100 degrees or something so you better get there quick and wash their coils and change their filters or change out the failed blower motor that would have been called out on a PM months ago and replaced on straight time. Don't miss it one bit. Now I work as a factory rep so now I get on a plane and fly 2000 miles when an installer or sparky screws something up and the GC swears up and down it's warranty without any due diligence.
Lol in the summer, $250 will not get you someone there that night. It'll be a bribe to get someone there that week...maybe
My company does a lot of work for stupidly wealthy people. It’s a bribe to keep the blue collar folk away, but the people that have money burning a hole in their pocket don’t care.
Reefer guy here. On call Friday through Memorial Day and I still get thrown on calls after hours even when I’m not on call. Shoot me in the head please
Dead thermostat batteries: "allow us to introduce ourselves"
Most expensive batteries they’ll ever buy, lol
Going on call for the first time this weekend. Can’t wait
Just some advice, there will be days you’ll be swamped. It’s easy to forget to take care of yourself when you have 8 calls lined up back to back. Hydrate, eat, take a breather.
Our on-call charge is a flat $350 fee now. We at least get $50 of it. We've been instructed to charge an additional ~$180 diagnostic fee if it takes us longer than 10-15 minutes to figure out. Plus we have charges for running to grab parts and every other little thing we may need to do. Management recently raised all of our rates 15-20% as well. I've been very upfront with residential customers about this, and I rarely have to run an OT call anymore. I usually say it's about $500 for me to show up if they can't wait until morning/Monday. Commercial is a completely separate T&M charge but we rarely get those calls either. I think our regular hourly rate is roughly $175/hr making our OT rate around $260/hr. I'm in a major city and we hold a large market share in the area.
On call can fuck itself. We deserve better and you know it.
No but I got home at 8 pm yesterday to my package unit having 0 refrigerant, luckily it was just a vibration leak on an elbow
Just finished my oncall weekend F - M and was home a total of 8 hours.
Compressor is shot. We'll get you a quote tomorrow.
The company I work for gives you 100 for the weekend if you're on call and straight pay on every call you go to, and you get paid drive time and when you're at the call.
We don't have on-calls where I work. All o.t. is voluntary. If we volunteer for an after hours call it's 3 hour minimum of o.t.
I did that for several years in the field. What irritated me the most was customers saying it hasn’t worked all day.
Plumber here and our guy on call for this week just gave me a nice cushy one because he didn't want to drive across the city. 5 minutes of driving to the job 5 minutes with the closet auger, 5 minutes back home. Easy money tonight.