Can anyone throw me a current average fee charged for emergency call-out these days?

It's very rare that I get anything like that, and then normally only for a neighbor or something similar. I got called a couple of nights ago about 8:30 p.m. for an overflowing water cistern and the attendant tripped RCD and flooded wiring. It's going to be an insurance job, so I want to include a reasonable emergency fee.

Thanks!

NZ $ 68 plus overtime rates at 1.6 times your normal hourly rate, for utility work.

set by the union.

On stats you claim an extra day in lieu as well.

Paul,
I have it on good authority here, that nothing less than 3 x your usual hourly rate will be even looked at by an Insurance Company.
We have a Senior Station Officer (with the local Fire Brigade) here that is a local Insurance Assessor.
It's a worry.
Ray,
I'm not aware of any Electrical Unions here in NZ?.
I was a member of the Energy and Communications Workers Union when I first started my time with the local PoCo here.
The Employment Contracts Act (1990) dissolved a LOT of unions at that time.
I don't want to get into anything like a union argument, lets leave that to lesser BB's.
Same side of the coin Paul, Charge what you think you are worth!.

Paul, for "emergency callouts" you should charge whatever you think your customer can comfortably pay. For instance, a large industrial customer with heavy downtime expenses should pay more than a little ole lady who calls you out to fix her oven on christmas eve.

For sure. Normally I would just pick a figure that I felt comfortable with for the job and the circumstances. As this is an insurance claim, although I'm not out to gouge every penny I can, I don't want to sell myself short either! Not being involved with anything on insurance usually, I was just wondering about what they would consider reasonable. (They'll be getting bills for carpets, new ceiling, etc. from other tradesmen as well.)


I was thinking somewhere along the lines of 50% on normal rates and a 30 GBP callout fee, which is not far off that.

Can anyone in the U.K. comment as to whether that sounds reasonable for this country?


When I first read that I thought you meant they'd refuse to pay a low bill and was wondering why on earth they'd complain if the figure was lower than they expected.

Re-reading, I guess you mean that they would likely just rubber-stamp anything up to 3x the normal rate without batting an eyelid?

Its an interesting point Paul because I don't think their are any guidelines for callout charges anywhere.

Insurance work may be the only deciding factor in callout charges then ?

I suspect it's also going to vary considerably around the country. Even taking just normal hourly rates for a job, there's no way that most people around this part of rural Norfolk would pay some of the amounts I've seen quoted for London, for example.

The state award here says that an employee must be paid a minimum of 3 hours wages for emergency work. I take that into consideration when deciding how much I'm going to charge someone.


[This message has been edited by briselec (edited 02-12-2006).]

Thats it Paul, its the locality that makes it so hard to set callout rates. I guess the best thing to do is consult your local sparkies as to their charges.

It might be interesting to get the yellow pages out and call some local companies and check their charges, I'll bet you'll find some very differing rates.

Paul,
Regarding my comments about the 3x hourly rate.
During the time that I was an Electrical Contractor here, we lost out on a LOT of Insurance work.
I found out after I left EC work that you have to "compete" with the current players in the field.
The old idea of put a quote in to save everyone a bit of money, doesn't wear here.
It's almost like a racket, no wonder peoples premiums are so high.
I'm told that 3-4 times the market rate is usual these days, but the workmanship is through the floor.
Glad I'm not part of it anymore.

You mean the insurance company would refuse a bid if it was lower? Hmmmm........

For what it's worth, I understand that as far as the ceiling repairs are concerned the insurance assessor has said that if they can get a quote for under 500 GBP they'll accept it without question; if it comes to over 500, they'll want three separate quotes.

The electrical is a little different, of course, since the work has already been done, but it's not going to be anywhere near that sort of figure.

The 3-hour min. for emergency work wouldn't be far off anyway. I was there for over 2 hours on the evening, checking what had been affected, isolating the affected branch circuit, meggering the remaining circuits and restoring power to the rest of the house. I spent about another 2 hours at more civilized hours the next day pulling in one new cable drop and replacing a fitting which had been right in the path of the flood.

Off-on-a-tangent anecdote: I thought everything was unplugged and disconnected from the affected circuit, but when I came to megger it out again there was a stubborn low-resistance phase-to-neutral, about 150 ohms which just had to be some sort of appliance still on the circuit. I spent about a half hour scratching my head and thinking that there was nothing else left to unplug!

Then I found it: A central heating pump on a fused spur which was still on. You know what's embarrassing about that though? Yep, I'm the one who wired that pump onto the circuit a year or so ago!



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 02-12-2006).]