We all hate when prices go up. And we all know they seldom go down again. As stated in CharlesWorks policies, prices are subject to change without notice.

Going on 25 Years in Business

You don’t get to stay in business as long as CharlesWorks has without three things: great staffing, great customer service, and sound business decisions. In order to keep the first two, we must maneuver through the third, especially during economic times like these – as we have had to several times in the past.

I have given the current economic situation much serious thought. I see some businesses laying people off so they can hire new people for less money. That’s a pretty short-sighted approach and will only save them some money in a very short term. Going that way made no sense to me whatsoever. If you look at how long the CharlesWorks staff has been here in general (https://charlesworks.com/our-staff/) you should know I don’t think in terms of my team that way.

I have spoken in depth with Susan, who handles many of the finances here. I’ve conferred with Robin, our General Manager here at CharlesWorks, about this as well. Evan, who interfaces directly with most of our clients, has also shared input. We brainstormed to arrive at the best ways we can deal with this current economy as a company.

Personally, as the CharlesWorks owner, it is most important for me to provide job security for our fantastic, dedicated staff members. Without our team’s dedication to customer service, we could not provide the level of care and service our web clients have become accustomed to. While we can’t always immediately answer every call, we still try to get back to our clients within a workday. We still try to get their minor web changes done within three workdays – more often than not in the same workday. And I want to continue to provide consistent working hours for all our staff.

Our Hourly Rate

Electric is a large part of what keeps everything operational here at CharlesWorks. Our electric is one of the largest pieces. We were subjected to a massive (about 110%) electric rate increase that started back on August 1 of this month. No doubt those of you who are in our area are aware of this. This increase forced to immediately increase our hourly labor rate to $99 (about 10%). Despite this service increase we will continue to only bill webwork labor by the minute. So 16 minutes of work (that’s our average service request) will now cost $26.40 – up only $2.67 from its previous cost of $23.73. This change is effective today, Saturday, August 13.

Note that we are not raising any other pricing (which includes web hosting still at $19.99 per month, email hosting, or domain names).

Delinquent Service Restoration Fee

This does not apply to any accounts who keep their billing up to date or have made special arrangements ahead of time.

For those accounts that are 90 or more days in arrears (have made no payments in the past 90 days) we are implementing a suspension on all web and email and DNS server services. Let’s face it, nearly all of our clients are responsible and keep their accounts up to date. The few who are delinquent in payment make more work for our staff, thus, a $59.00 service fee will be added to any suspended account. This fee will cover our time spent shutting down the services and bringing them back up. The account must be paid up to date in full to restore the services. Our terms of service have always been clear: indicating that you own all of your materials when your account is up to date.

Thank you for your continued business.