Word: repairer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...wallpaper salesman in Buffalo, Spahn was just ripening in the minors when he went into the Army in 1942. A combat engineer, Spahn won a battlefield commission and was wounded by shrapnel in the action to repair the Remagen bridge for the first troops to cross the Rhine. Spahn shrugs off both the wound ("It was only a scratch in the foot'') and the promotion ("I got it only because all our officers were killed...
Across the U.S., home-repair clubs retrieved a Pasadena woman's emerald ring that had been inadvertently flushed down the drain, exterminated night-chirping crickets that kept a Long Island insurance agent awake, sent a geologist to a Pacific homesite to estimate the danger of rockslides for a nervous homebuyer...
...Padding the Bill. Most of the several hundred home-repair clubs are patterned after the first don't-do-it-yourself club, United Home Services, Inc., which started in Los Angeles in 1954. United signed up a stable of contractors to do the jobs funneled to them through the club, now has 400 to handle an average 200 calls for service a week. The home-repair clubs handle all the paperwork, send bills to customers, skim 10% of the plumber's or painter's fee in exchange for giving him the job. The customer who joins...
Though professional repairmen are a notably independent lot, they flocked to sign up with the home-repair clubs, seldom try to pad their bills to make up for the 10% club fee. Reason: they save more than 10% by using the club since it assumes the costs of advertising and billing, keeps nonpayment of bills down to 1% v. sometimes as high as 10% for nonclub clientele. Moreover, the ready-made market shoots up business. TV Repairman Kenneth Daniel's business has doubled in the year that he has been affiliated with San Francisco's Homesmith...
Bartenders & Cowboys. The householder also benefits. The best home-repair clubs take pains to find honest and efficient contractors, follow through to make sure the work is done properly at reasonable prices. It usually is; the contractor knows he stands to lose not one but hundreds of customers...