Canon Charge 130+GST per hour for Labour to fix my lens!!

Hi folks,
Some may have read about my mishap with my 70-200 f/4 L recently. I finally got my lens back after a month wait and when I looked at the repair receipt I was amazed to see 2.5hrs labour charged at $130 plus GST (12.5%) PER HOUR!!

Thats $146.25NZD Per hour. Amazing!! I want a job with them....

However knowing what the hourly pay rates are like in New Zealand I bet the technicians only see about $25 per hour of that in reality..

Steve From NZ

Isn't that around 2/3 the price of a new one? In that case, I think it's very poor judgement from their side to even consider working on it, because with some materials, repair will be more expensive than replacing.

However I'm not very surprised by this nummber, my company charges 115 euros an hour for me when I do work for a customer. In dollars that comes down to around $163.

Not only am I totally worth that amount, an individuals salary is completely separate from it's working rate. The latter also includes housing, office equipment, terchnical equipment, supporting staff, IT, training, coffee etc.

TweakMDS wrote in post #8581769
Isn't that around 2/3 the price of a new one? In that case, I think it's very poor judgement from their side to even consider working on it, because with some materials, repair will be more expensive than replacing.

However I'm not very surprised by this nummber, my company charges 115 euros an hour for me when I do work for a customer. In dollars that comes down to around $163.

Not only am I totally worth that amount, an individuals salary is completely separate from it's working rate. The latter also includes housing, office equipment, terchnical equipment, supporting staff, IT, training, coffee etc.

Round figures in NZ, the lens would be about $2200.00 so the labour would be approx 1/6 of the replacement price.

Round figures in NZ, 115 EURO would be about $230.00

The labour rate, despite sounding quite high is not over the top, lots of plumbers & gasfitters in Auckland are charging $90.00 pr hour + GST or more.

I'd be interested to see what they charge for labour in the US to see if its equivalent. Considering the money Canon make via the products they sell I would have thought labour charges would be slightly cheaper.

I can understand plumbers charging $90 per hour cause they have to include travel cost and other business expenses because this is their companies only source of Income.

Canon on the other hand is a different story.

I am not looking forward to my next visit to them...

Steve From NZ