[ic] Taking a Poll

[kyle@invisio.com]

At 09:49 PM 4/17/01 , you wrote:
>On 17 Apr 2001, Doug Alcorn wrote:
>
>DA>>I'm not sure what you're talking about here.  I know Midas and
>DA>>Jiffy-Lube don't charge the same rates for the same work.  Granted,
>DA>>every Midas charges the same rate.  And local, non-national, shops
>DA>>certainly have their own rates.  The point is that not every mechanic
>DA>>is created equal and they don't charge like it either.
>
>I disagree with you.
>
>Most of the shops that I am familiar with use a 'Flat-Rate Manual'.
>And, that says that it should take 8.7 hours to remove the head and
>replace it. The shop then multiplies that by their hourly rate to
>determine the cost. If the mechanic can do that job in 6 hours, then
>they are ahead, and the customer still pays for 8.7 hours. If the
>mechanic takes 10 hours to do the job, the customer still gets charged
>for 8.7 hours.
>

Sorry, but I just had to pop in on this part. I have a two year associates 
degree in automotive mechanics. You are missing one key piece of information
when quoting flat-rate prices ..... vehicle year and make!

Each Vehicle and year (as well as various options) will determine the
flat-rate,
so to draw a parallel you would have to account for various OS systems,
accesses
restrictions, Perl Versions, installed libraries (and versions), etc just
to chart all
of the flat rates for a simple install of IC!

And of course it gets more complicated if you talk about custom,
vendor-specific
"features" to add to a catalog...

Just my 2 cents.....

Kyle (KC)