I try to offer a very good repair service and I don't normally  charge for repairing my instruments, even after their nominal guarantee period, unless they have been mishandled or otherwise abused by their owners.
The main problem with repairs is not the repairing, but the organising. I must receive around 50 recorders a year to repair and in the majority of cases, the repairs are very minor. It often takes me no longer than 15 to 20 minutes to do simple tuning, or re-voicing. The difficulty and time spent lies in sending the instrument to me, and my sending it back. Some years ago there were complex administrative problems in sending instruments between countries, but nowadays, within the EU the controls have disappeared, leading to a reduction in the paperwork. However the main problem for me is still: fetching the parcel from the post office, re-packing the instrument after making the repair, the time taken writing a short note about the repairs and queuing at the post office. It's easy to see that if I multiply the time spent doing these tasks by 50 per year, I often will spend hours on this each week.
If I was to charge a fixed compensatory amount to cover post and other costs, each time, it could go some way to help. Unfortunately, I've not yet been able to find a suitable method for doing so, because sending small amounts of money abroad is proportionally expensive.

Orders
Since moving to Amsterdam, I have changed my policy regarding orders. Instead of taking deposits, I am now trying to work to a looser timetable, where I don't have to make a certain type of instrument every year. I hope that now I will find the time for many of the fascinating instruments that I have been wanting to try for years, but which due to the pressure of my waiting list, have never actually got around to making.
This will inevitably mean that although I will try to respect all my existing orders, I will often produce other instruments that I want to make. Any interested customers, may then in effect jump over the queue of people already waiting for the more popular instruments. My waiting list has been around five years long since the middle of the eighties. Five years seems to be a sort of time limit; when in the past it's got longer, fewer people have ordered for a while and it's become shorter as a result.