The Appliance Blue Book®

Dean Landers, the creator and Author of “The Major Appliance Service National Price Guide®” (MASPG), teamed up with Service Company Solutions in 2009 to create an interactive and more useful product. We have re-branded Dean’s book as The Original Blue Book, Major Appliance Job Rate Guide® aka the “Appliance Blue Book”. It was formerly known as MASPG – The Major Appliance Service National Price Guide.

The Original Blue Major Appliance Job Rate Guide® is a pricing guide to help appliance service companies determine a legitimate price for a repair. These “Job Rates” often called “Flat Rates” take many factors into consideration to determine the cost of the job. The primary elements are: parts, time & labor, equipment, predictable and unpredictable circumstances surrounding specific jobs, inventory management, education/training, office staff, advertising, insurances, travel time to and from the customers home, and all service vehicle expenses.

The task of calculating all of these elements into every repair is daunting. Many repair companies don’t take the time to do this and either fail or fail to be as profitable as they can and should be. The Blue Book has taken this concept and made it easy for thousands of service companies to make a fair and reasonable profit while instilling trust and integrity with their customers. By having this book right in front of the customer (and yes you should show the Blue Book job price listed to the customer) your customer sees consistent job rate pricing in a professional book or online. This eliminates guessing, inconsistency, and instills in the customer a professional confidence in your service, and not feeling like you are just making up prices.

How will this help my company?

Using the Blue Book helps your company in a number of ways: First , the Appliance Blue Book® averages the amount of time a service call should take to complete by taking into consideration all the various levels of technician skill and experience found in the field today. So if you or your technicians are experienced, efficient and can make a repair quickly, you and your technicians are not penalized like you would be when charging by the hour. On the other side of the coin, if your technicians are inexperienced, the customer isn’t paying for their inexperience on a job that takes longer than it should.

Next, you build confidence and integrity in your pricing by having the consistency of a job rate found in an industry standard, professionally produced book. This allows you to show your customer what the job is going to cost before you begin the repair. The customer can plainly see what the national job rate is for their needed repair. This provides a simple, efficient method for the technician to price their jobs. Finally, the Blue Book takes ALL the factors of running an appliance service company into consideration by charging a professional rate for professional service!

Avoiding Customer Complaints

How much do you charge per hour?  How much is the part? 

The #1 customer complaint are hourly labor costs. If a repair costs a total of $255.00 to install a part, presenting the repair as a flat rate, your customer knows exactly how much they will be paying up front. 

When you present the cost as $45 for the part, $95 for your service charge and $115 for labor, many times your customer will ask how much time you expect to spend on the repair to justify the $115 labor. You have then set up the clock watcher who sets the timer at the beginning of the repair. If you complete the repair quickly, your customer then has reason to believe your labor is too expensive. Why go through the process of explaining everything that goes into the labor charge and still have an upset customer when you are done?