[TenTec] TenTec Digest, Vol 157, Issue 5

[Al Gulseth]

OK, I need to jump in here. I had held off posting this because of the amount 
of traffic on this subject, but the cost to the company is more likely much 
higher than that. My source? a friend of mine who is retired from a fairly 
far up the food chain HR position at a well-known company you'd instantly 
recognize. A while back I was discussing the folks pushing for a $15 minimum 
wage with him, and like Duffy, thought 50% overhead was about right. He made 
the surprising (at least to me) statement that the cost to the company where 
he did HR was _over double_ the employee's hourly wage or salary. According 
to his statement this would put labor cost alone at $80+ for the $40/hr. 
example. Add to this all the other overhead including environmental regs 
(electronics = hazardous material) and I can see the reason for the announced 
labor rate. To put this in perspective, a computer service company I worked 
for on a contract in the past charged $105/hr. - over 20 years ago. (And no, 
that wasn't the rate they were paying me....)

73, Al
 
On Wed January 6 2016 5:20:15 am Amateur Radio WB8NUT wrote:
> That rate is very high.
>
> If you pay your bench techs $40 an hour, then add burdened labor rate of
> 50% on to that, it is $60 an hour. Then add another 50% for overhead and
> profit, you arrive at $80. So that is some massive profit percentage being
> charged to a customer.
>
> Now many customers like me in the past paid more for their radio from
> TenTec because of the former legendary service and support. Now that
> support and service is going to be very costly, why do I want to pay more
> for the radio? So if service pricing is going up dramatically, then the
> cost of the radios needs to come down to be more competitive with the
> Japanese brands.
>
> At this point, we are no longer dealing with the old TenTec. What was
> TenTec is largely gone. We have someone who owns the name, and designs, but
> other than that, TenTec is pretty much starting from scratch so it is
> really going to be a new company.
>
> JMHO
>
> Duffy
> www.wb8nut.com
>
> > Message: 4
> > Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 09:35:10 -0600
> > From: Dalton <w4wuq at att.net>
> > To: Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment <tentec at contesting.com>
> > Subject: Re: [TenTec] TEN-TEC Announcement January 4, 2016
> > Message-ID: <795E4C93-332F-44E3-BD50-1A383A9F69CA at att.net>
> > Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=us-ascii
> >
> > I agree, seems high.  Even higher if tax is added on top of that.  Maybe
> > we all need to revert back to the days of the Heathkit SB series
> > equipment.  For the most part those can be repaired at home.  None of
> > these surface mount components in them.  They had room to get around
> > circuits.
> >
> > 73,
> > Dalton - W4WUQ
> > w4wuq at arrl.net
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> >> On Jan 4, 2016, at 8:46 PM, Jim Vohland <n9vo at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Sounds like reasonable repair policy except for one thing.  Don't most
> >> repair facilities charge a "repair estimate" fee but only if you don't
> >> have unit repaired. 265 minimum plus shipping just seems a bit high. 
> >> But guess I could be out of touch.
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >>
> >>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>> ______________________________________________
> >>
> >> On Jan 5, 2016, at 10:30 AM, John Henry <jshenry1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Regarding the inputs from 73, Jim K9YC
> >>
> >> I believe you said it better than I ever could.
> >> People that don't run a business with overhead forget all of the
> >> ancillary costs of just doing business itself. Let alone whether that
> >> business is repairing cars or manufacturing and repairing transceivers.
> >>
> >> Thanks for your inputs,
> >> 73, KI4JPL
> >> John Henry
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> TenTec at contesting.com
> >> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec
>
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