Freelance stablehand-charges?

[peaceandquiet1]

Advice please. If you offer a service such as mucking out, hay, feeds, etc, and the owner says it is 45 mins work but it takes you an hour and a half flat out....how do you get around the discrepancy if charging by the hour.....

 

[Chinchilla]

Tell them!?

 

[Goldenstar]

You have to be up front and say it takes me an hour and half that the deal for me coming .
If they won’t accept it move on .

 

[Chinchilla]

Also, if you're charging hourly, tell them if it takes less time too, for obvious reasons.

 

[catwithclaws]

agreed - when I take on a new client I ask exactly what's expected and then follow up with a visit to check out the setup i.e yes I can turn out and muck out 5 horses in an hour, but not if the fields are half a mile away or the muck heap is a 10 minute walk.

and only after that will i quote - though I'm slightly different in that I charge for the job that needs doing rather than by the hour. I don't break my back poo picking sliding around in a muddy field for £10 an hour ���� I've got half a dozen long term clients this way and I love my job ��

 

[Cecile]

I would want someone to tell me it took longer than planned, its possible that you done a more thorough job so it took you longer and the owner has already noticed that,
you are doing a job so all your time should be fully paid for, whilst you are at that job you could be elsewhere

I had the opposite problem with a freelance and am quite miffed by it, she told me it took ages her husband came too and played with one of my ponies and loved him blah blah...... I checked the camera's as some of the stuff she said was a bit suspect and random and she was there less than an hour, no husband unless he was invisible and smoked 3 fags whilst enjoying the view <yikes> - I've decided she won't be coming back lol

 

[peaceandquiet1]

I would want someone to tell me it took longer than planned, its possible that you done a more thorough job so it took you longer and the owner has already noticed that,
you are doing a job so all your time should be fully paid for, whilst you are at that job you could be elsewhere

I had the opposite problem with a freelance and am quite miffed by it, she told me it took ages her husband came too and played with one of my ponies and loved him blah blah...... I checked the camera's as some of the stuff she said was a bit suspect and random and she was there less than an hour, no husband unless he was invisible and smoked 3 fags whilst enjoying the view <yikes> - I've decided she won't be coming back lol

that sort of thing freaks me out and one of the reasons I never go on holiday as no one I trust to horse sit. I have come back to each horse lame, ponies galloping round the garden, horses with huge unattended wounds....

 

[coss]

I ended up changing how I charged as a client I had used to change how many horses were stabled (at random, I'd find out when I arrived in the morning), the work level varied tremendously according to how long the horses had been in overnight and whether she wanted them fed on the floor or haynets with hay/haylage, the equipment was often not in good order and sometimes the horses would misbehave (dangerous). Initially the variation in time meant an average of an hour's work - sometimes less, sometimes more but as time went on I found it was more often longer than an hour. I ended up changing to a minimum fee which covered me for if it was a half hour visit or up to an hour then charged extra for any work that I knew would take me over that time. I then found I had to give up as had back issues from the level of work. I saw the client a few weeks after giving up and they apologised for how rough the conditions were and how hard the work was as they'd had to start doing it themselves and realised how hard going it was. I'm now far choosier with what work I take on now!

 

[Cecile]

that sort of thing freaks me out and one of the reasons I never go on holiday as no one I trust to horse sit. I have come back to each horse lame, ponies galloping round the garden, horses with huge unattended wounds....

Oh I don't remember the last time I actually went on holiday, this was just me having to go to a family function at lunchtime, so I done morning and evening yard duties and this person done middle of the day <I have one in so I didn't want to alter the routine>
On a happy note it has never happened to me before but now my search is back on for those rare occasions when I need to go somewhere, there are some lovely people out there who aren't wonky

 

[Pinkvboots]

i would just tell them, I have a new person that does mine when I am away she is very good and I trust her completely but I had a bit of a nightmare with the last person, she was supposed to be a friend but I found out she would moan and bitch about doing my horses to some of the liveries next door, saying how she hated doing them and how much hard work it was when most of the time my horses are out so its just mainly feeding hay and filling water, and if they did come in it was for a few hours and they just need a skip out afterwards so not sure where the hard work is. wouldn't mind but she was paid quite well for what is essentially a half hour job hence to say she wont be doing them anymore.

 

[peaceandquiet1]

Update. I have told the person, after she cancelled me yesterday after having booked me as she decided she had time to do them herself, that it took much longer than stated and that I would need to charge for 1.5 hours. No reply.......

 

[Northern]

that sort of thing freaks me out and one of the reasons I never go on holiday as no one I trust to horse sit. I have come back to each horse lame, ponies galloping round the garden, horses with huge unattended wounds....

This makes me a bit sad I do a lot of house and pet sitting (including horses!), and treat each and every animal as if it were one of my own (probably more paranoid than my own!). I have heard similar stories though, it's hard to trust people these days...

 

[Cecile]

Update. I have told the person, after she cancelled me yesterday after having booked me as she decided she had time to do them herself, that it took much longer than stated and that I would need to charge for 1.5 hours. No reply.......

Can you send her an invoice? I hope she replies shortly and pays you what she owes without any grief

 

[honetpot]

I think you should always have a minimum charge, how ever little time it takes. I sometimes work through an agency, and the minimum charge is two hours.
The freelance I use I am very grateful for, she has never let me down and when I was ill last year I do not know how I would have coped without her.
She is doing them all next week, she does a better job than my daughter who in theory is free, but the place would be a tip when I come back.
Its easy to work for nothing, and in my experience people who want something for nothing are the worst payers and are themselves very unreliable.

 

[peaceandquiet1]

Thank you.

The person has got back saying she cant afford the charges if I charge for 1.5 hours.

 

[conniegirl]

Thank you.

The person has got back saying she cant afford the charges if I charge for 1.5 hours.

Then she needs to do them herself.

You have as much right as anyone else to be paid for your time

 

[Goldenstar]

Then she needs to do them herself.

You have as much right as anyone else to be paid for your time

Exactly

 

[peaceandquiet1]

I am new to this and she is so far my only client.I think therefore I felt maybe I was being slow, but after i had been a few times I figured out ways to minimise any waste of time and worked as fast as possible without compromising the very high standards she required. And there is no way i could compress the work into an hour.

 

[ester]

In which case she needs to find someone else to do the work.

Our freelancer charges for the work (per horse per visit) not per hour. So are you in future able to quote a price for the job intead of the number of hours guessed by the owner? To me it would be much more normal for the owner to say what they want doing, you to say how long it will take and what your rate is and take it from there.

 

[peaceandquiet1]

Yes for sure it will not be an hourly rate again. I did a yard for someone else a few years ago and she paid per hour but the work took exactly as long as she paid so it worked well.

 

[Rowreach]

Don't worry, you will soon find good clients will be only too happy to pay for a reliable, efficient person who they trust to care for their horses in their absence. I'd booked someone well in advance to do my two for a few days last summer, and she let me down at the last minute - didn't even tell me, I found out by accident when a mutual Facebook friend commented that they were coming down to housesit for her that weekend!!!

 

[Cecile]

I wonder if anyone has ever thought of setting up an agency for stablehand workers? It maybe an excellent service to have in local area's, obviously it wouldn't be a cheap option but if it was well run and reliable it would be so much better than pot luck or worrying about things. They could set their fees for hourly, half day or full day. Not sure if it would work or not, only thing I wouldn't be happy about is the stablehands being paid peanuts and the agency taking too much of their salary