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Appropriate rental fees?


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a friend at work i have been friends with for 20+ years has sent his M32 in for various reasons. he has had a few gigs pop up and needed a mixer so i rented him my Qu-16, apple extreme router and ipad with charger and cable.

 

these gigs are net $4k each.

 

after a few gigs he asked me what i wanted for a rental fee, and i thought i was giving him a HECK OF A DEAL by saying $60 per night. for anyone else i either wouldnt rent out or it would be $150/night.

 

he kinda balked but accepted.

 

i think i was really low on my price. what is a typical fee for those items, racked and ready to go?

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Somebody like Andy or Bill would be able to give you a better response - but I would use a formula like this

 

Y = total replacement cost for vintage gear, or total purchase cost for new gear

X = Y * 0.03

 

Nightly fee: X

Weekly fee: 2X

Monthly fee: 3X

 

Note that this is much higher than Long & McQuade (Canada's big chain) charges. But they get both ends of the deal on this stuff (the same holding company owns Yorkville, which is mostly what they rent). Long & McQuade appears to use X = Y 0.013 or thereabouts, assuming they are pricing based on retail purchase price.

 

Wes

 

 

 

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Note that this is much higher than Long & McQuade (Canada's big chain) charges.

 

I'll offer a hunch that an attractively priced rental program by a retailer could be a marketing strategy by getting the product in the hands of a potential buyer... rather like test driving a car at a dealership. A "break-even" or even subsidized rental price that produces sales may be pretty cheap and/or cost effective advertising.

 

A couple years ago I purchased a new to me, used riding lawn mower... and it is "pretty nice"... comfortable, easy to operate, does a real nice job, etc... My neighbor wander over to admire my new to me mower while I was mowing a mutual patch of lawn that we trade-off on mowing. I invited him take my mower for a spin... he refused, absolutely. Said if he tried it out, he'd likely "have to have one"... didn't want to be tempted.

 

 

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thats what i thought, but $250 seems high. i know guys that cant get work with an entire rig, truck, trailer +themselves for that price per night.

 

It really varies... that 10% thing is what I have seen when people are dealing with A/V providers at hotels and for professional events, renting to the public and less price sensitive clients.

 

The 3% with a big break for multiple days is a lot closer to what I've seen for cross rentals between my friends for live sound or low-rent video production.

 

FWIW, if it really is a buddy, usually they either _want_ to pay me what it's worth or I do it for free cause they've helped me out. $60 for that rig seems really inexpensive (normal, though) buddy rate, especially on a $4k gig.

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I agree pretty much with Bill's opinion, maybe 7 or 8% rather than 10% depending on the piece of gear (mics take quite a beating in the rental market). My guess is that $75/day would be a pretty darn reasonable rate (maybe too reasonable), and 3x the day rate for a week is pretty typical.

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