Tip replacement pricing

The tip guy needs to eat too...I'm called a thief by some of my customers as well.They want me to have ready at an instant of notice a half million dollars of machines and tooling operated by experienced guys and charge 5 cents to use it.LMAO.Pay it or move on.
 
I'm in the worst part of America to be a hardcore player,but it's worked out ok as far as doing business on repairs.

It sure helps being the only guy for 100 miles in any direction that does quality work,esp while you wait.

One-piece tips are 15.00,and for layered tips I recommend Ultraskins and those are 20.00 installed. In my area people just will NOT pay 35-40 installed for Kamui,G2,etc so I don't stock them. If they bring me a tip they want to try or have a preference,it's 15.00.

I always ask,but very few have ever asked me NOT to throw the cleaning in with it. I refuse to charge extra for that like some in metro areas that charge 45.00 for a Kamui Clear :(,then want another 10 bucks or more to clean and slick it back out.

Obviously,I can't do much on Cuetec or other coated shafts.

As far as break/jump tips,I charge 25.00 for White Diamond,G-10 or whatever even if they bring it to me because I will NOT just throw it on there with my normal CA glue and hope it doesn't come apart. There are prep measures to be used with those materials.

Those I leave in the lathe overnight so it is "clamped" and use a tough epoxy.

This makes sure they don't come back a week later and expect a freebie.

I warranty my tip and ferrule work too,with just 2 exceptions.

If the cue has been left in a hot car,no dice.

If the shaft has slapped a hard concrete or wood floor and has tiny pieces of gravel or crap pounded into it from impact and your tip comes off,once again no dice.

Yes,I can look at either of those and will know what happened :rolleyes:.

I don't begrudge anyone whatever they charge,but I can't get away with premium prices in my area. Tommy D.
 
The Taom tip itself is about $30
I charge about $16 for a tip change, a bit more if you want your shaft cleaned at the same time.
Seeing how much a lathe costs, then add the price of glue, sandpapers, polish, wear on equipment, razorblade, the time to put on the tip and if it pops off, I have to cover the cost of a new tip and do the work once more, I feel that is a very reasonable price.
Sometimes I go down to the pool hall just to pick up a shaft or two. If I factor in the time on that, I`m actually loosing money.
Then I have not added up all the time I spend answering questions, messages and generally being polite to people, listening to their ideas, which range from interesting to insane...
 
My local tip repair guy charges $30 for the $15 tips and $20 for the $2 tips.

If you want to pay less, then you need to do it for yourself.
 
Every business looks like a gold mine veiwed from the outside.When it is your time and money the reality sets in.
 
Kevin3824 said:
Well lets see I could send it to seyberts and they will do it for 14.95 cost of that tip from them plus 7.50 for labor. Now if I lived close to Seyberts like I do that local pool hall there would not be any shipping charges now would there.
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You seem to have a really strange sense of what is fair. You realize the Seyberts can charge that because they are in the business of selling cues and other pool materials right? The person at Seyberts who is doing the work is also getting paid a salary by Seyberts just to be on site so they can charge you much cheaper prices. They are generally making additional money off the sale of the cue and the tip as well.

This guy spent money on all the equipment, and will likely spend close to an hour of work since break/jump tips take a tiny bit more time than a normal tip.

$5 to clean your balls? That is not a bad price. How often would you possibly need to do this? A decent ball polisher costs hundreds of dollars. So lets say you did this twice a year, and then in twenty years you shake your fist that you could have bought one. If you do buy one now, I doubt it will still work in twenty years.

Also, buy the lathe, and all the other tools you need and practice doing tips for awhile. Go through all the mistakes and enjoy learning to work with harder tips like a break jump tip.

Then see if you want to charge every person who comes along $7.50 to do a tip. Friends maybe, but not someone who walks up and heard you replaced tips.

I know this sounds harsh but you need to step back and look at what you are getting upset about.
 
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The price is a bit high IMHO. No more than 30 bucks and I would do them all day for that.
 
Kevin3824 said:
I went to a pool hall today (name withheld on purpose) and asked how much it would cost to have a tip replaced on my jump/Break cue. The owner of the hall gave me a wide range in prices to start then qualified it by saying it would depend on the tip and the shaft. I showed him the cue on the spot. It was a three piece break jump my girl got me for Christmas last year. The cue itself I believe costs about $50-80 tops I cant remember. He asked me what kind of tip I was looking to have put on it. Off the top of my head I told him a Samsara because that was what I remember hearing a lot of praise about on here at the time. He told me he had to text his repair guy and find out a price and if he had one on hand. In the mean time I posted on here asking for tip advice and most seem to be suggesting Taom tips. His repair man texted him back and said he was not home to look to see if he had a tip in stock but it would cost $40-45.
I told him I had to think about it.

I thought about it over lunch today and looked up the price of a Samsara break/jump tip and found them at Ozone for $15 each. I read Samsara have a rep for popping off. Basically, they want to charge me $25-30 labor to replace a tip.

Then I thought about it more and realized that pool hall's repair man is the same person that a few weeks back we asked him to tighten the weight bolt in my girlfriends Cuetec cue and not only was that beyond his ability but he ripped the rubber bumper off it attempting it. When she showed me that I immediately took the cue to him personally and confronted him. He tried to unscrew it from the rubber bumper instead of the entire cap. I know many cues the bumper screws out of the cap but Cuetec specifically warns you on the web not to do that and to unscrew the entire cap. When I told him that he said he tried it but could not do it. I was able to unscrew it by hand in front of him at that time. He then took it in back and tightened the weight bolt. When I asked him how he planned on correcting the damage he offered no solution. I had to ask if he had any glue in back to at least glue the bumper back in place which he did.

I feel like every time I go to that pool hall I get the feeling that besides table time itself which seems very reasonably priced everything else they offer is way over priced. It makes me feel like it will only be a matter of time before they would start charging you to use the rest room if they thought they could get away with it.

I mentioned I was considering getting a ball polisher at home and the owner asked why I could bring my balls in and he could run them through his machine. I thought to myself that was nice of him then he said something like yeah it would take a lot of $5 trips to get the balls cleaned and polished before I would have spent the same money to get a machine of my own. At first I thought he was doing something nice for me then when he said that I realized he was only trying to make more money off of me.

Maybe it is me having worked for a travelling carnival in past my experiences are likely different then most on here. That particular pool hall just reminds me of days gone by when I was working a game booth and the locals came by. It was my job to try and get them to spend as much as possible at my game and send them home broke. The more I go there and see it the more I want to play only in the private sector and not go to the pool hall except on rare occasion. Kind of like going to a carnival when it comes around once a year.
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Did you have a question?

KMRUNOUT
 
Kevin3824 said:
Well lets see I could send it to seyberts and they will do it for 14.95 cost of that tip from them plus 7.50 for labor. Now if I lived close to Seyberts like I do that local pool hall there would not be any shipping charges now would there.

I was not looking for attitude. I simply think the labor charge to replace a tip should not be 25 or 30 dollars. Honestly, I think that 5-10 dollars labor is far more reasonable to have a tip replaced by a competent cue mechanic.

I am not convinced that is what that pool hall is offering either based upon previous experience with him. If you take something to a competent repair person and they break or damage your property typically they should without being asked replace the parts they break without question. That is not what happened previously with this mechanic.
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You have a number of issues going on in your post. If you think $5-10 is a good labor rate, you should buy yourself a lathe, learn the craft, and then make a million. I do tip work. I am VERY good at it. I will put the tip work I do up against anyone on earth. I don't make a career out of it. Is is just a hobby that I enjoy. It is absolutely not worth my time to get $5 for the job. Also, if a tip has a reputation for popping off, and your tip guy is planning on supporting his install, then the tips that have glueing issues will probably cost more. I charge just $35 for Kamui and G2 tips. I think I'm on the low side. Again, not to blast my own horn too much, but I do damn good work. If I charged $50, it would be 100% worth it. Anything I break, I fix. That is a cost of either time or money or both. If I scrap a tip, that is cost. If my lathe needs to be cleaned up, that is a cost. I use only very fresh blades. That is a cost. I use sandpaper and various supplies. I use only very fresh glue. Those are all costs. Charging $35, I am lucky to clear 20 bucks on an install, GROSS. Now deduct out my costs, and I am probably making 10 bucks max. So, with all due respect, there is more going on than it seems you have considered.

All that being said, I don't think I would want to work with a guy that has the business approach you describe, regardless of the prices.

I am a man who appreciates quality. When I shop for a tip, cost is irrelevant, within reason. I'm gonna play with the tip for a while, say 6 months. If the tip is $7, or $14...I'm never going to know the difference over that time period. Now granted if I can buy the exact same thing cheaper somewhere of course I'm going to do that. But if I find a tip I like, I'm going to buy that tip whether it is the cheapest or the most expensive. Before myself, I had only one tip guy. He did perfect work, and he is the one that taught me. I really didn't care what he charged, because it was always perfect. If anything happened, he replaced the tip no problem. Back in the day, he charged $45 for Mooris. I specifically remember the conversation after I had tried a million different tips. "Wow Moori's sure are expensive." "Kerry, you've tried every tip. You know what you like. Get the tip you like." So I did. And really took that approach to most everything when it comes to shopping. I want a good value, but I don't want to buy crap. I will pay more for the better one. I'd try using this approach with *tip guys*. Find a good one. Then don't question his prices. Just buy the thing you like, and enjoy the satisfaction of the superior work you received. When I give a guy his shaft back with a new tip, I want him to practically gasp with awe at how nice it looks, how perfect. Then, in three days or so, I want to get that text I always get..."omg the new tip is amazing...I don't know what you did, I've got this same tip from so and so else, but this is the best tip I've ever had!"

If you live north of Boston, I can be your guy haha.

Anyway, good luck with this.

KMRUNOUT
 
Kevin3824 said:
Is it common to be charged 25-30 dollars labor for a tip replacement? Should the labor rate be different for a 100 % leather tip than a phenolic tip. Or for that matter different rates based on the cost of an entire cue of shaft? It just seems to me that replacing a standard tip is not rocket science.
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on those Damn things your lucky if it's not $50/$75
 
Why would anyone want to do a job to make 20 dollars gross profit. And be responsible for perceived damages. And guarantee the work.
Especially for someone that thinks yor time to set up the job, do it, clean up , and bill it, is worth the price of a hamburger.
 
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I put tips on for $10-$15 dollars all the time.

Break tips-----I make them and put them on for $15...no problem.



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I'm in Northern VA and pay a guy $20 to put on tips I provide to him...so, $20 for the labor. The cheapest I've found was $15, and that was at a tour stop where the guy was putting tips on all day, as fast as he could turn the lathe. Cue repair guys maybe replace 2 or 3 tips a week some weeks, maybe get a more substantial job once a month...it's a slow, low density side business, especially if they're not making cues or doing other things for the pool room. If it really bothers you, get a cheap tip repair lathe and do them yourself...I've considered it myself from time to time, but actually don't mind what I'm paying for tip replacement lately. I agree with OP, I would not pay a guy $5 to run my own pool balls through the room's polisher...I would rather do them by hand, myself, and I'm no cheap skate. Seems to me a room owner would do that for a customer to keep the customer, not make a few coins.
 
You don't even need a lathe. I used to do them by hand all the time. It's really not that hard. Flattening the ferrule is the hardest part, but that's easily done with a razor blade and the right technique.

Doing it on the lathe is nice because it makes it easy to clean/polish the ferrule and burnish the tip. Whenever I do one, I polish the ferrule with various grits of polishing compound. It really helps get a lot of the little scratches out that hold chalk and make it look terrible. THAT is not so easy to do by hand. When I did it by hand, I would polish with various grits of micromesh, and it took forever.
 
There has been at least $20 worth of discussion here..........

It's just a tip......... go get it replaced and take your wallet with you................


Kim
 
I bought a used Willard Tipping Machine here on AZ. Learned how to put my own tips on. Easy, fun, good sense of satisfaction. I figure if I ever want to, I can sell it for what I have in in. It ain't brain surgery :-)
 
lakeman77 said:
I bought a used Willard Tipping Machine here on AZ. Learned how to put my own tips on. Easy, fun, good sense of satisfaction. I figure if I ever want to, I can sell it for what I have in in. It ain't brain surgery :-)
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This, my friends, is the way it should be. Well done, lakeman. :clapping:
 
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