My T's policy is that if an email takes him less than 15 minutes to read and respond to, he doesn't charge. That's been the case for most of my emails. If it takes him longer, he charges it on 15-minute chunks of his hourly rate (so 15 minutes = $45, etc.). But when he writes a longer response, it's LONG, like 5 multiple-sentence paragraphs (most recent one being 650 words). He says he charges because he's devoting more time to it, like not dashing off a response while sitting and watching TV with his kid, but taking the time to sit and think about it. And he also says then I'm paying him for his time, so it's not like he's just doing me a favor, that could then be taken away. I've had issues with both ex-T and ex-MC, who didn't charge for emails--though they either didn't generally reply (ex-T) or sent just a couple sentences (ex-MC)--suddenly changing the boundaries on them (like "it's too much" or "You need to reduce the email"). So I appreciate that in a way.

With phone calls, he only allows them when prescheduled or else a few minutes in a crisis (like to determine if a client has to go to the hospital). I've had one prescheduled call with him, when I was out of town (and he was going to be out of town the next week) for a half hour, so was $90 (. Ex-T and ex-MC didn't charge for phone calls, which I really appreciated, particularly during a weekend when I was in crisis a couple years ago. I didn't talk to ex-T much on the phone, but with ex-MC, at one point, it was once every month or two, with a call lasting from 10 minutes to 45 minutes. But as ex-T said when she opted to limit email, many T's (including some in her practice) don't allow any outside contact at all, paid or not. She said how one T was like "I give them 50 minutes, that's enough!"