The old Rolleiflex owner who refused my repair estimate

Had a guy in his 80s bring in a Rolleiflex with a stuck shutter last June, I quoted him $180 for the full CLA and he just stared at me for a solid minute... then pulled out a receipt from 1974 showing he paid $45 for the same job. He said "things should get cheaper as they get older, right?" and walked out with the camera still broken, has anyone else had a customer treat inflation like it's a personal insult?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_rowan3d ago

Held the same view for years, thought any camera with mechanical guts should be cheap to fix since it's just springs and levers. But @thea_bell makes a solid point about what that $45 meant in 1974, it was basically a week of groceries back then. Got to thinking, the real cost is the skill and the time it takes to not screw up something that's older than most people working today. Yeah, it's simpler than a digital camera, but it's also way harder to find parts for and one wrong move ruins the whole thing. That old guy wasn't wrong to be shocked, but the price is fair once you break down what it actually takes.

thea_bell4d ago

June 1974, a gallon of gas was 53 cents and the average mechanic charged $12 an hour. That $45 was a full day's pay for a working man back then, which is why he's stuck comparing apples to oranges. Maybe he has a point though, that camera is way simpler than a modern one, less to mess up, so why does the labor cost triple? I mean, you're not rebuilding a transmission, it's a shutter and some gears, so I get why he'd think the price is a scam. Did you show him a breakdown of what the $180 actually covers, or just hand him the total?