Reply to Thread

We get paid nothing for no calls

but we get paid from the time we get the call to the time we get back home

Originally posted by mattm
Portal to Portal means from the time the tech leaves his door till he walks back in it. I charge from the time my phone rings till the time I get home.

I charge from when the phone rings 'til I get out of the shower at my house.

During the slow season we get $50 for both Saturday and Sunday for half duty. In other words all oil accounts or all propane accounts. No deliveries.
If we take all the accounts its $100 for both days.
During the busy season its $50 for Saturday and Sunday for 1/4 duty. That would include only oil accounts or only propane accounts for designated "north" accounts or designated "south" accounts.
The busy season we usually have 4 techs on call every day.
Unless you like one hell of a lot of overtime.
We'll see how greedy I get this winter.

In my case, $0 for 0 hours.

Portal to Portal means from the time the tech leaves his door till he walks back in it. I charge from the time my phone rings till the time I get home.

if you are a contract customer you will get night/weekend service with the understanding it is port to port if the tech comes out after hours and is at home.the watch money as i call it ranges from $75 up to $250(OEMs) or some give you 8hrs or 15hrs times your rate as the cash just to be on.that money is not touched by 20hrs OT or no OT during your time in the "BARREL"

I am not real sure the true meaning . I know my truck uses gas from the time I leave untill the time I get back, and @ $3.00 a gallon it costs $20.00 to start it anymore

ok so someone tell me. I have always charged both ways on service calls. I was always under the impression portal to portal was just paying travel time from where you are and not the time it takes to get back. I never could understand why anyone would do that and thought those shops were using it as a way of getting work by not charging both ways. Now Im thinking they were charging both ways too. Is that what portal to portal means? Cant believe after all these years I was misunderstanding what it ment.

We get paid $0 extra for being on call and are paid from
the time we are dispatched from home to the completion of
the job. No portal-to-portal. This is a mid-large-sized
HVACR company. Companies of similar size in our area seem to pay $75.00-$100.00 for being on-call and portal-to-portal. I'm not sure why ours does not.

Here in Miami, Florida, it is very cut throat. At one time I counted over 500 HVAC companies in the phone book, and this was just the ones in the phone book, not the un-licensed ones.
Being so, it is very competitive, and one of the reasons I switched from resi to resi/commercfial, to just commercial.
But, I am up against some very large national and very established service companies in this commercial market.
My techs know, before being hired, that they must go on the on call rotation.
I compensate them by gauranteeing them 40 hour work weeks, of which maybe only in December it cuts close, pay them the best wage in this market, and have one of the best benefit packages.
I have to, to some of the commercial accounts, bank comuter rooms, hospitals, nursing home, and a large commercial meat packing plant, etc, etc have to offer 24/7/365 service. To compensate mt techs for this, it is an automatic 4 hour service call, or if longer, portal to portal, meaning when the van turns on in the techs driveway, until he returns to his drive way he gets paid for it, at time and a half. I also give them $150.00 cash. Running 8 techs, they are on this rotation 1 week out of 8.
To answer the question, they get $150.00 for making themselves available.
About once a year, for the past 5 or so years, I have had to hire. I put an add in the local paper, and have been bombarded with "tech?" applications. No problem at all finding a body, the problem is finding someone who can pass a drug test, has a clean drivers license, and actually knows what he says he knows.
Out of their rotation, maybe, they go out once on the weekend, and might have to repond ot a call or two after 5 on the week days.
This is the norm down here. Residential it is worse. I belong to alot of the "networking" activities here with other owners, and they all must offer the 24/7 service to stay competitive. Most do not offer anything in the way of compensation, just the hours billable to the customer.
As far as service contract customers, the tech makes the same if the customer is a contract customer or not. The particualr contract describes how I handle the bill for each particular customer.
Everyone that I seen, resi service wise, give a break on 24/7 service, if you have a contract with them.

I don't get paid any extra.

When I ran service, I used to get 3 hrs. reg. pay if no calls came in. We only got what was on our service tickets if we got called out. We were only required to service contract customers during our on call time; so, we always added a little extra to cover the 3 hrs reg. we would have gotten whether we were called out or not. Make sense?
Oh well, I tried.... <BG>
Bob

When you are on call, lets say for the weekend--and you dont get called out(i know, that never happens) but suppose it did

How many hours would the tech be paid for making himslf avaliable