I never spend only five minutes at a customer's home. Especially if it's a new customer and it's the first time I've been there.
I always do a courtesy evaluation of their entire electrical system as part of the service call fee. I pull panel covers and check and tighten connections. I check for and test GFCI's, look for broken receptacles, missing covers, check for smoke detectors and CO detectors.
I went out on a call a while back where the customer lost power to some outlets. When I got there she said she had lost power to some other outlets in her home previously and the electrician she called found a loose wire in the electrical panel and tightened it. She said she would never use him again because he charged her $135 just to tighten one wire.
I pulled the panel cover and found three more loose neutrals on the neutral buss that the previous electrician had missed. I went through and made sure all connections were tight. The panel had been upgraded recently but was not wired correctly and didn't meet code. Grounds and neutrals were landed on the same buss even though this was a sub panel without a main breaker. There were 20amp breakers feeding 14awg wire.
I did a courtesy inspection of her entire home and wrote up a list of my findings and prices for the repairs. I wrote up $2,500 worth of repairs charged her the same $135 and she commented how happy she was with what I had done.
Out of the $2,500 she had me do $2,000 worth of repairs. Below are some of the things I did.
Installed 12 GFCI receptalces.
Replaced breakers.
Installed ground bar.
Corrected polarity of some receptacles.
Grounded some receptacles.
Replaced existing smoke detector with combination CO/Smoke Detector.
The other electrician before me came out and quickly found the problem, tightened one connection, collected $135 and left. He could have gotten another $2,000.
Don't assume the customer isn't interested in buying anything else while you're there. Show them how much money they'll save by having you do the work while you're already there.
On another call I went on I reset a GFCI breaker in the panel. Did a courtesy inspection and sold $950 worth of repairs.
GFCI receptacles in the kithchen.
Whole house surge protecion for power, phone and cable.
Other minor repairs.
There's usually a lot of things that are unsafe and in need of repair. Alway check the garbage disposal especially on older homes. These are often a mess and very unsafe from a do it yourself job. There's a gold mine under there.
Always carry smoke and carbon monoxide detectors with you. You can't sell what you don't have.
When replacing a switch try to upgrade them to a dimmer if they don't already have one.
Going out on a service call and only collecting $90 is going to break you.
