Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

.RADIO BROADCAST. SERVICE—DO YOU OR YOUR CUSTOMERS PAY? (Continued from Page 19) of service. For example, it has probably not even occurred to most dealers that the portion of the store space devoted to service—shop, service desk space, and space required for storage of parts, ' ac- cessories, and antenna equipment used by the service department—is space which would be devoted to some other purpose if there were no service depart- ment, or else a smaller store would be used. Therefore, the cost of that space (rent, or taxes and upkeep) should be charged against the service department instead of against general overhead. All of the stationery used by the service department should be charged against that depart- ment, and a separate telephone, or tele- phones, should be installed so that, insofar as possible, all service calls can be charged to service overhead instead of the common practice of making them a general over- head expense. In short, a complete set of books should be maintained for, and by, the service department, and the expense accounts of that department should be as carefully subdivided as those of the sales depart- ment. The dealer should know, at the end of each month, and at the end of each year, the separate cost of labor, antenna equipment, apparatus, batteries, and tubes sold by the service department; the gross income from each of those items; the gross profit on each item; the percentage of pro- fit on each item; and the totals of all those accounts grouped together. If the service department is not large enough to keep one bookkeeper busy, or one service executive busy, then whatever portion of the time of an individual is devoted to the service department should be so charged. Otherwise, the sales de- partment would be carrying an item of office overhead which rightfully belongs to service. Free Service There is just one service item which may be properly charged to sales expense if the dealer desires to do so. That is the cost of performing free service within the limited guarantee period, and the cost of free installation if the dealer believes he cannot break away from that harmful and unnecessary practice. It is fairly common practice in the automotive in- dustry to charge the guaranteed free service to sales, and some successful radio dealers believe it to be good practice. The author does not agree with that view, however, simply because it has been proved by several dealers that the service department itself can carry that expense and still break even or make a profit. That is to say, it can carry the expense of the free service when permitted by the sales department to make a reasonable profit on the installation. If free installa- tions are indulged in, the sales department, and not the service department, should most certainly be the one penalized. Any free service performed after the guarantee period, as return calls resulting from improper service, should, of course, be charged to the service department. In- cidentally, the cost of rendering guar- anteed free service over a ninety-day period is not high if the merchandise sold is of good quality, receivers and the tubes and loud speaker to go with them are tested thoroughly in the shop before delivery, the installation is a high-quality job in every respect, and the salesman lias not made exaggerated performance claims. For example, the free calls made by the dealer whose service methods we have been discussing averaged only about one and one half per sale in 1928! Labor Costs Before we go into the subject of how much should be charged for service, it might be well to examine the cost a little more closely, for upon the latter depends the amount of the former. The chief item of service, labor, is the one real cost which is so generally under-estimated, and the one for which dealers almost universally under-charge their customers. The chart accompanying this article gives the details of the situation, which are taken from re- cords of the service department of a highly successful radio retailer. The figures are an average of the cost of eight men over a period of two years. The most significant thing about the figures is the fact that the amount actually realized by this dealer's service depart- ment—which the author considers to be in the very top rank of efficiency—is only 67.5 per cent, of the amount which is his advertised and applied rate for labor per hour. That is something which is totally neglected in the accounting of the average service department. Figured on the same basis—of efficiency as measured by per- centage of the labor charge which can be considered actual gross income from labor —the average dealer would certainly not be rated more than 50 per cent. That would mean, with the same cost, and the same charge per hour, that his income would be $1.25 per hour, giving him a margin of only 19 per cent, to cover all of his service overhead. It has been the experience of large dealers with good service departments that it requires the utmost care to keep the overhead down under 40 per cent. If the average dealer is able, by careful planning, to keep his service overhead down to 40 per cent., or near that figure, but he does not make more than 20 per cent, on labor, his net loss on labor is not less than 20 per cent, and often more. Sad to relate, the actual conditions are even worse. The average dealer computes, very roughly, that his labor costs him, even with fairly good men, somewhere between 60 and 75 cents per hour. Then he calculates that if he charges $1.50 per hour for service he will have an ample margin, in the neighlxjrhood of 50 per cent, and everything will be lovely! In the first place, they neglect the fact that if they pay a serviceman at a weekly rate which amounts to 75 cents per hour, the cost for the hours the man actually works will be very close to §1.00 per hour. Then they also neglect the fact that a charge of $1.50 per hour will bring in, even with the utmost efficiency, less than $1.00 for each hour of work. The average dealer at the present time not only shows no gain on service labor with which to take care of service overhead, bul he shouts a loss before his overhead is deducted. There is just one answer to the problem: If good service is to be rendered, and the dealer is to break even on the lal»r item of his service, then $2.50 per hour is the lowest rate on which he can base his charges to the customer! STRAYS FROM THE LABORATORY (Continued on page bO) decrease appreciably. Such a voltage is not difficult to attain from local stations and may cause appreciable cross talk. Set Vngineers, therefore, are increasing the c<- 'trol-grid bias to as high as 3.0 volts in j^fU'tcases and increasing the screen-grid polS.. al from 75 to 90 volts. It was said hi July that the screen-grid tubes were none too good, some of them drawing grid current at a negative poten- tial as high as 1.5 volts which means either increasing the bias voltage some more, or running the risk of cross-talk trouble, or of finding some way to avoid cross talk by circuit changes, or, of course, producing better tubes. Why does a screen-grid tube seem more prone to draw grid current than other types of tubes? The chief reason is proba- bly because of its unpotenital filament. The 227 is another offender. The high- voltage-filament tubes, such as the Arc- turus 15-volt tubes, draw but little grid current and then only under conditions at which the tube would not be operated. If the filament has a high voltage, there is only a very small part of it that can radiate electrons to the grid. On the other hand, if the filament has a low voltage, the WD-12 type for example, a large part of the fila- ment will be near the voltage of the grid, and consequently can contribute to the grid current. Contact potentials and the initial velocity of the electrons play an important part in this grid current business —which worries both set and tube de- signers. PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING (Continued on page 24) to it. One of the leads shorted to the frame through a thin mica washer. A nickle's worth of tape fixed the difficulty and left enough for the owner's bicycle. What is the moral to this story? There are two. In the first place the serviceman was a "dumb-bell." He belonged to an authorized dealer—but not authorized to carry the receiver which hummed so badly. He did not know how to isolate trouble. He was going to charge the cus- tomer a ridiculous sum of money to fix a difficulty that the manufacturer should have avoided by careful insulation. This is the second part of the moral. The re- ceiver manufacturer who made that set never should have used such a flimsy de- vice as the single mica washer to hold back some 300 volts from going straight into the ground and ruining not only reception but a rectifier too. This fault lies primarily with the manu- facturer, secondarily with the serviceman. But granted that manufacturers must save money, why could not an intelligent serviceman have found the difficulty: 1 Is it a fact that the average serviceman is as stupid as many people think? If this is true, the manufacturer must look the situation in the face and make receivers that will not go bad in service. It can be done. Vreeland Tuning Patents The Vreeland Corporation, 140 Cedar Street, New York, N. Y., states that the Vreeland "band-selector" patents make possible undistorted reception of the en- tire modulated wave and do not require "geometric" tuning. It is claimed that the Vreeland patents make possible a non- infringing r.f. system. "The Vreeland sys- tem," says its inventor, "may eliminate completely radio-frequency tuning." 60 • • NOVEMBER 1929 •