Charges

I am often asked this question, so I thought I would put my suggestions forwards for all too see.

What can I charge in my notices?

In reality you can charge what you like as you are making "an offer to contract" and if someone does something such as ignoring a notice of trespass then they are deemed to have accepted your terms and conditions which include your fee schedule.
However, if you are sending a fee schedule and you intend enforcing it you need to keep it real and by keeping it real it means being reasonable, and being SEEN to be keeping it reasonable, so how can this be achieved?

If you send a fee schedule claiming £5000 per minute then it will be dismissed as being unreasonable, but if you make reasonable charges based upon your earnings, or if you are unemployed you take your skillset and get the average wages for thise skills as these figures are online and downloadable, so download them. Everything often centres around office hours and while you may mot work office hours you can still use them and still be a little creative, and remember the law always claims charges must be fair and proportionate, so you can stick to this by being fair and proportionate.

Lets look at a simple example: if we assume an electrician as our example, and said electricial earns £20 per hour, we have a fair and proportionate charge of £20 per hour as our starting point, if said electrician earns an overtime rate of time and a half this raises our charges to £30 per hour for overtime rates which are verifiable by said electricians company and his/her wages slip as proof of claim may be necessary and you have proof, so lets look at how we can word our charges.

Charges are as follows:

My charges during normal office hours will be charged at £20 per hour or part hour during normal office hours of 9am to 5pm during the working week of Monday to Friday.
Out of these hours my charges will be at my current overtime rate of £30 per hour or part hour.

If our electrician works on Sundays and gets double time then you can add this in as:

My charges for Sunday working from 00.00 hours (Saturday night Midnight) to 23.59 (Sunday night) will be at my overtime rate of £40 per hour.

If anyone questions these charges to dispute them as fair and reasonable you are only charging what you would be paid by your employer and this can be proven.
But we can be a little creative and work to an ovetime rate if we have done a full shift and have to deal with them after a full days work.

If I have done a full days work and have to deal with you, my charges will be at my overtime rate of £30 per hour as this will be deemed as overtime.

We can charge for anything such as travelling and if we look at publications such as What Car Magazine or others, they list a "cost per mile" for running a vehicle and my current company car shows a cost per mile charge of 60.06p per mile, so we look up our vehicle and charge this rate by copying the rate with a scan or photocopy of the page with our vehicle highlighted.

My charges for responding to correspondence are:

The current rate of 0.60p per mile or part mile thereof as currently shown in What Car magazine, my time as defined above, and a car parking charge of the full cost of parking in the nearest available car park.

You will have documentary proof of your vehicles costs per mile and you record your mileage and round it up to the nearest mile, you have your charges for your time already laid out, and you have a receipt or ticket for car parking which can be copied and charged for.

What else can you charge for:

How about telephone calls, if you have clearly stated in your paperwork to them that you only wish to deal with this matter in writing only and they ring you then you impose a charge for this:

It has been clearly stated in my documentation that this matter is only to be dealt with in writing; and if any compamy employee, agent, or representative (including any third party) contacts me by telephone then a charge of £10 per minute or part minute thereof is to be levied for breach of contract.

Here are just a few exmaples of keeping it real, and remember you are "making claim" in any fee schedule enforcement and he who makes claim must also substantiate their claim, and by keeping it real with verifiable charges you can provide proof of claim.