[TenTec] Service

[Ron Castro]

As a business owner, I had to respond to this.  While $40 an hour for a tech
is good, and 50% overhead barely covers the employer's cost of sick leave,
SSI, vacation, unemployment, worker's comp, ObamaCare etc., 'overhead' is
greatly under estimated.  Here are a few items:

Rent/mortgage
Loan interest and amortization (initial investment and working capital)
Taxes
Banking services
Bad debt/collection costs and write-offs
Building upkeep
Security (building alarms/surveillance etc.)
Vehicles/transportation 
Furniture
Purchase, maintenance, calibration and depreciation of good test equipment
and other tools
Computers, software and updates
Acquisition and carrying cost of lots of expensive, and is some cases
proprietary parts
Insurance
Advertising/marketing
Employee recruitment
Employee training
Sexual Harassment training (required every two years by law in California
for all managers)
Utilities, including internet, phones, electric, sewer, water, etc.
"General and Administrative":  Management, accounting/bookkeeping, shipping,
postage, office supplies and the big one: LAWYERS!

All of that, and the little things from coffee to toilet paper, and you
would be amazed at how expensive it is to run a business these days and
still get a reasonable return on a risky investment.  I'm surprised anyone
can offer service for *only* $140 and hour.

I'm glad I started my own business 30 years ago, but faced with that
daunting task in today's business environment, I would pass and instead, get
a job as a paper-pusher with the Social Security Administration!

          Ron Castro
           N6IE
    www.N6IE.com

Member:
                  ARRL
     Redwood Empire DX Assn.
 Northern California Contest Club
Northern California DX Foundation
  Society of Broadcast Engineers

-----Original Message-----
From: TenTec [mailto:tentec-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Amateur
Radio WB8NUT
Sent: January 6, 2016 3:20 AM
To: tentec at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TenTec] TenTec Digest, Vol 157, Issue 5

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