Just an observation and a commentary.
LDS's complain that they lose money on air fills.
Yet I know a shop in Monterey that survives mostly on air fills, and to a lesser degree rentals.
My local LDS charges $8.00 now for an HP fill and $7.00 for an LP fill. A HP 80 costs $8.00 and an LP 95 costs $7.00 ?
They have openly told me that I am not what they consider an A+ customer because I already have all my gear and only come in for air fills, so therefore they lose money on guys like me.
What does it cost to service a compressor and keep it up to snuff?
Lets say a shop sells 1000 fills and in the case of my LDS lets average it to $7.00 a fill, that's $7000 they have collected. Not really a huge amount but it's an amount they would have not had otherwise. So does overall service including hidden costs cost more that $7000 per 1000 fills?.. Really?
I was also told they lose money on fills because for the time spent doing it the employee makes more per hour than what the air fill yields. That might be true, but everytime I go in to get a fill there are no customers in the store and the employee is alone and bored stiff with nothing to do.
I asked them then If they lose money on air fills why don't they just stop doing them altogether, and their reply was because they would go out of business.