A lot of our customers are frustrated with the new fees that I have to charge.
I undoubtedly don’t have any choice, because gas prices have doubled in the past 4 weeks, then before summer, I was spending about $2 a gallon for gas, and now gas is more than $4 a gallon and it’s splitting into our profits.
I’ve been in supplier for the past several years and I have never charged a single purchaser a trip fee. A lot of Heating and Air Conditioning companies will charge a trip fee if a purchaser is outside of their official area. I have never charged a fee, but I had to beginning last week. With gas prices doubling in such a short time, I have no choice, many of our customers are more than 40 miles away. In order to continue servicing these customers, I have to charge an extra fee for the longer distances. This is the only way that I can get away with keeping prices the same. I thought about raising the prices of several official h3ac services, but I don’t want to hit customers in town with higher rates. 68% of our Heating and Air Conditioning service customers are in town and it’s important that they are cheerful with the business and the prices. They are a dozen unusual companies they can call for service. Until gas prices return to normal, I don’t have any other choice. I need to keep the supplier moving forward. I hope that I will not lose too several customers over the trip fee, but it’s a option I’m going to have to take.