A customer needs a shelf put up. She sees a minimum charge of ninety pounds, decides that is outrageous for twenty minutes of work, and does not enquire.
She is right that it is twenty minutes of work. She is wrong about what it costs to deliver, and nobody has ever shown her.
A worked example
Say a tradesperson charges 45 an hour with a minimum of 90.
The shelf takes twenty minutes. That is the part the customer sees.
Around it: twenty-five minutes driving each way, ten minutes finding parking and carrying tools in, five minutes discussing the job, ten minutes clearing up and loading back into the van. That is one hour and thirty-five minutes of the working day for twenty minutes of shelf.
At 45 an hour, that time is worth about 71. Add fuel and parking at perhaps 12, and the visit costs around 83 to deliver before any profit.
The 90 minimum is not a premium on twenty minutes of work. It is roughly the cost of the hour and a half the visit actually consumes.
Publish the arithmetic, not the figure
A customer who sees this understands it. A customer who sees only the number assumes they are being taken advantage of, and does not enquire.
Explain the alternative
Save jobs up. Ten small jobs in a half day is far better value per job and a much better use of the tradesperson's day. Actively telling customers to do this converts declined enquiries into proper bookings.
Publish a half day and full day rate
Around four hours and around eight, with what typically fits into each. This is the pricing most customers want and few businesses offer clearly.
Say what the minimum includes
Whether materials are extra, whether the minimum covers the whole visit or only labour, and what happens if the job turns out to be bigger.
Handle the second job on the same visit
If a customer adds something while you are there, publish how it is charged. Being clear prevents both an awkward conversation and unpaid work.
Explain travel charges separately
Whether a distance surcharge applies beyond a radius, and where the boundary is. Customers outside your area would rather know than be quoted and then declined.
Price quiet periods differently
A reduced minimum for a slot you would otherwise not fill monetises an empty Tuesday without undermining your normal rate.
Say what happens if the job is quicker than the minimum
Customers assume a minimum charge means the tradesperson leaves after twenty minutes having taken ninety pounds. Saying plainly that the remaining time is theirs to use, and inviting them to have a list ready, turns the same charge from something that feels like a penalty into something that feels like value, and it usually produces a longer booking.
Urgent work is priced differently again
It is covered in emergency versus scheduled work questions handymen field.
Quoting small work quickly is the skill
It is covered in small job enquiries that handymen can quote quickly.
Every trade faces this conversation
The parallel is in plumbing callout charges and other price questions, and knowing where to stop is covered in how to handle sensitive questions in your chatbot.
Getting started
Publish your minimum, half day and full day rates with the reasoning, then capture job lists at any hour. SpideyChat for home services businesses answers from your published pages, our plans are on the pricing page, and the chatbot ROI calculator works through the numbers.