Originally Posted by
70sSanO
There is not enough time nor words to explain the areas where our economy has changed over the past 50 years; and the impact of all those changes.
However, I believe that it is a correct assessment that people will not pay 3 times the amount for the same service so a bicycle mechanic can earn $50/hr and sustain a lifestyle in expensive areas.
If you really think about it, someone will pay an HVAC tech whatever they need to pay to get their A/C working and maintain their comfort level during the Summer heat wave.
At the same time, that person will ride their bike at speeds that will result in death, but complain about not being able to find a good bike mechanic to overhaul their disc brakes.
John
I face a similar problem. I am a goldsmith with over 40 years experience. People will pay a mechanic $99 / hour, but balk when I want to charge $75/ hour. There is a perceived value issue here. If a person doesn’t want to learn to do a particular repair or acquire the specialty tools to do so, how little are they willing to pay for an expert job? The cost is often pegged to the value of the initial item. Thus a BSO from a big box store might be more challenging to get to operate properly than a more quality oriented brand bike would, but the customer won’t be willing to pay for the actual time and materials.
When I need to repair or make an item in silver, I usually have to hand fabricate something as there are no pre-made components in Silver. The same item, fabricated in gold will actually take less time because there are available components in gold. In other words, a silver item, though it is worth a fraction of a comparable gold one, will take three times longer to work on. The percentage of the final cost that is Labor is considerably higher. But the customer doesn’t understand why it costs so much more to make! Again; “perceived value”!