Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would you? If the business knows and agrees to pay you an hourly rate then you are only hurting yourself by billing less then the time spent.
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would we bill for less than ten? I'm so totally confused by what you are asking here. Are you asking if we randomly don't charge for work? Are you asking if we bill for actual time?
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@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would you? If the business knows and agrees to pay you an hourly rate then you are only hurting yourself by billing less then the time spent.
And what would be the purpose? Just to falsify the time and bill less?
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@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would you? If the business knows and agrees to pay you an hourly rate then you are only hurting yourself by billing less then the time spent.
And what would be the purpose? Just to falsify the time and bill less?
The false sense that you would be saving face and earning a customer? They'll just expect the same behavior next time or balk at what the 10 hours of work actually costs when it is billed in full.
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@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would you? If the business knows and agrees to pay you an hourly rate then you are only hurting yourself by billing less then the time spent.
And what would be the purpose? Just to falsify the time and bill less?
The false sense that you would be saving face and earning a customer? They'll just expect the same behavior next time or balk at what the 10 hours of work actually costs when it is billed in full.
Nice tie back into the thread
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would you? If the business knows and agrees to pay you an hourly rate then you are only hurting yourself by billing less then the time spent.
And what would be the purpose? Just to falsify the time and bill less?
The false sense that you would be saving face and earning a customer? They'll just expect the same behavior next time or balk at what the 10 hours of work actually costs when it is billed in full.
Nice tie back into the thread
I try my best.
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When I worked for a consulting company 15 years ago, a tech was sent out to a client's site to install a network printer. The printer itself didn't have a network port, so they had to use a JetDirect box.
The original tech went out and spent two days trying to get it to work and failed, he then elicited help from another tech, who after another day also couldn't get it to work. Day four they ask a third tech who comes in and has it installed in about 20 mins.
What should that client be billed?
I can tell you that all three techs submitted their billing, and the consulting company sent a bill for 24.5 hours of billing to the client. This was north of $3000.
The client demanded a meeting and refused to pay it. I don't know what the ultimate billing amount was, but it wasn't the full bill.
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
When I worked for a consulting company 15 years ago, a tech was sent out to a client's site to install a network printer. The printer itself didn't have a network port, so they had to use a JetDirect box.
The original tech went out and spent two days trying to get it to work and failed, he then elicited help from another tech, who after another day also couldn't get it to work. Day four they ask a third tech who comes in and has it installed in about 20 mins.
What should that client be billed?
I can tell you that all three techs submitted their billing, and the consulting company sent a bill for 24.5 hours of billing to the client. This was north of $3000.
The client demanded a meeting and refused to pay it. I don't know what the ultimate billing amount was, but it wasn't the full bill.
That's a tough one. Had those techs been staff, and they often are, the customer pays that all of the time.
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
The client demanded a meeting and refused to pay it. I don't know what the ultimate billing amount was, but it wasn't the full bill.
This is where "under the hood" transparency can be a bad thing. It really took that long to fix and would have been the same had it been internal staff. The firm seems to have handled it badly, and sometimes time has to be eaten, but that things are difficult and need multiple attempts, multiple eyes and such is normal IT. That the third tech did it in twenty minutes is based partially off of two other techs accumulating lots of info for the third tech before they even started, for example. It's impossible in IT to say "well it should have only taken X amount of time."
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@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
When I worked for a consulting company 15 years ago, a tech was sent out to a client's site to install a network printer. The printer itself didn't have a network port, so they had to use a JetDirect box.
The original tech went out and spent two days trying to get it to work and failed, he then elicited help from another tech, who after another day also couldn't get it to work. Day four they ask a third tech who comes in and has it installed in about 20 mins.
What should that client be billed?
I can tell you that all three techs submitted their billing, and the consulting company sent a bill for 24.5 hours of billing to the client. This was north of $3000.
The client demanded a meeting and refused to pay it. I don't know what the ultimate billing amount was, but it wasn't the full bill.
That's a tough one. Had those techs been staff, and they often are, the customer pays that all of the time.
Exactly - which my company has been doing while I have been working on my P2V issues (knowledge gain). I'm only working on this issue because I have the time.
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
When I worked for a consulting company 15 years ago, a tech was sent out to a client's site to install a network printer. The printer itself didn't have a network port, so they had to use a JetDirect box.
The original tech went out and spent two days trying to get it to work and failed, he then elicited help from another tech, who after another day also couldn't get it to work. Day four they ask a third tech who comes in and has it installed in about 20 mins.
What should that client be billed?
I can tell you that all three techs submitted their billing, and the consulting company sent a bill for 24.5 hours of billing to the client. This was north of $3000.
The client demanded a meeting and refused to pay it. I don't know what the ultimate billing amount was, but it wasn't the full bill.
Why wouldn't the customer be billed in full? I get that $3,000 is a lot to install a printer. But if there were existing issues, either with the location, the hardware itself, or some knowledge of the infrastructure that wasn't know, that needed three techs then the billing would make sense. If this was internal IT then they would have payed a lot more for the troubleshooting time and the time/money it would have taken to go to an outside vendor (or support) to set it up anyway.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
The client demanded a meeting and refused to pay it. I don't know what the ultimate billing amount was, but it wasn't the full bill.
This is where "under the hood" transparency can be a bad thing. It really took that long to fix and would have been the same had it been internal staff. The firm seems to have handled it badly, and sometimes time has to be eaten, but that things are difficult and need multiple attempts, multiple eyes and such is normal IT. That the third tech did it in twenty minutes is based partially off of two other techs accumulating lots of info for the third tech before they even started, for example. It's impossible in IT to say "well it should have only taken X amount of time."
LOL - in that particular case, I know that the first two tech brought nothing of value to the third tech. The first two should have even been employed as IT consultants - the third had a lot of previous experience doing exactly that job, so he was able to get it working super fast. Someone completely unfamiliar with JetDirect boxes, who had to read the directions fully might have taken 2-3 hours, but definitely not 4 days worth of billing time.
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@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
When I worked for a consulting company 15 years ago, a tech was sent out to a client's site to install a network printer. The printer itself didn't have a network port, so they had to use a JetDirect box.
The original tech went out and spent two days trying to get it to work and failed, he then elicited help from another tech, who after another day also couldn't get it to work. Day four they ask a third tech who comes in and has it installed in about 20 mins.
What should that client be billed?
I can tell you that all three techs submitted their billing, and the consulting company sent a bill for 24.5 hours of billing to the client. This was north of $3000.
The client demanded a meeting and refused to pay it. I don't know what the ultimate billing amount was, but it wasn't the full bill.
Why wouldn't the customer be billed in full? I get that $3,000 is a lot to install a printer. But if there were existing issues, either with the location, the hardware itself, or some knowledge of the infrastructure that wasn't know, that needed three techs then the billing would make sense. If this was internal IT then they would have payed a lot more for the troubleshooting time and the time/money it would have taken to go to an outside vendor (or support) to set it up anyway.
In some cases I would definitely agree with that - but in this case, the first two techs where just unknowledgeable in almost anything, and either couldn't google, wouldn't google or were just wasting time. Any person who knew how to install JetDirect boxes could have had it up in 30 mins. The first two just failed at the whole process (ultimately one was fired and the other quit before being fired, and left IT).
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@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
This is where "under the hood" transparency can be a bad thing.
I wasn't in the meeting, nor did I ever see the billing statement, so I'm not sure how much transparency there was in this billing situation.
I believe that the client mostly refused to pay for it because it should cost 10x as much to install a printer as it does to buy it.
Now of course we all know that installation can sometimes be more expensive than the purchase itself, but I think must of us also agree that's not generally the case for a printer. -
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
When I worked for a consulting company 15 years ago, a tech was sent out to a client's site to install a network printer. The printer itself didn't have a network port, so they had to use a JetDirect box.
The original tech went out and spent two days trying to get it to work and failed, he then elicited help from another tech, who after another day also couldn't get it to work. Day four they ask a third tech who comes in and has it installed in about 20 mins.
What should that client be billed?
I can tell you that all three techs submitted their billing, and the consulting company sent a bill for 24.5 hours of billing to the client. This was north of $3000.
The client demanded a meeting and refused to pay it. I don't know what the ultimate billing amount was, but it wasn't the full bill.
Why wouldn't the customer be billed in full? I get that $3,000 is a lot to install a printer. But if there were existing issues, either with the location, the hardware itself, or some knowledge of the infrastructure that wasn't know, that needed three techs then the billing would make sense. If this was internal IT then they would have payed a lot more for the troubleshooting time and the time/money it would have taken to go to an outside vendor (or support) to set it up anyway.
In some cases I would definitely agree with that - but in this case, the first two techs where just unknowledgeable in almost anything, and either couldn't google, wouldn't google or were just wasting time. Any person who knew how to install JetDirect boxes could have had it up in 30 mins. The first two just failed at the whole process (ultimately one was fired and the other quit before being fired, and left IT).
So unknowledgeable and unsupervised staff who had no business being in the field? I think you found one case study where paying the full amount wouldn't be viable, although the billing was still for the total hours applied.
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@Dashrender actually a printer should almost always cost more to install the cost to buy because they are actually that cheap to buy
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@JaredBusch said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender actually had thunder shit almost always cost more to install the cost to buy because they are actually that cheap to buy
Just wow Siri just wow
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@JaredBusch said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@JaredBusch said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender actually had thunder shit almost always cost more to install the cost to buy because they are actually that cheap to buy
Just wow Siri just wow
ROFL. I can't breathe.
