Fixing PC - How much to charge?

zilog_jones

I've only ever fixed PCs for friends and family up until now, so never named a price before - this time it's a work colleague of family

Basically I formatted the HDD (checked it first), re-installed Windows, Office, drivers, etc., and updated everything (I took it home to do all that as they only had dial-up and an XP SP1 CD). Can't really put an amount of hours on it as I was doing other stuff inbetween. How much would people normally charge for this?

Also, the actual problem was something I never saw before. The Windows loading screen would come up, but after that the screen would just go black - not into suspend/standby/"out of range" as if it was a resolution it couldn't handle - it just stayed in 640x480 @ 60Hz (as per the loading screen). Safe Mode worked OK, but from all the messing around I did it didn't seem to be a driver/graphics card issue, and nothing else worked (not VGA mode, and there was no restore point to use). When I took it home even Safe Mode died halfway through loading! Couldn't find anything on the net about this, so just re-installed (3 years old anyway).

Sqaull20

PC World charge €70

auggie2k

I say about €50 per hour ;-)

majiktripp

I'd agree with the €50ish mark, depends on was it really that much of a chore that you sat solidly at the laptop for 1 hour or were you comming and going,tapping "next" every so often...?
Hopefully if the colleague values the service word of mouth will due you some good and lead to more fixes.

Beano

just be aware that you are now responsible for anything else that may go wrong with the PC

L31mr0d

Beano wrote: »

just be aware that you are now responsible for anything else that may go wrong with the PC

true that. I once had a pipe dream of getting into PC repair, but after a few fixes for people and then the relentless badgering phone calls for months afterwards i've decided to only help out my immediate family with computer problems.

The money is not worth the aggrevation and irritation. Plus it is all the more difficult to tell people not to call you when they are friends, or family friends.

watty

€80 to €100 an hour.

Imagine you had to also pay for a secretary/telephonis/receptionist/ordering/delivery Jill-of-all-trades and well sited premises, heat, electric, phone, BB.

You can't work more than 20 to 30hrs of 40 hr week fixing as you need to order parts, research stuff, do test labs etc.. so as to stay expert fixing. So doubling what you think your costs inc enough to live on, is not unreasonable.

many small service people actually charge too little and wonder why they are working 60hr weeks and still can't fully pay bills.

watty

Sqaull20 wrote: »

PC World charge €70

And the staff doing it may have no time for research and also get paid little more than someone loading shelves in Tesco.

zilog_jones

majiktripp wrote: »

I'd agree with the €50ish mark, depends on was it really that much of a chore that you sat solidly at the laptop for 1 hour or were you comming and going,tapping "next" every so often...?

Well I wasted a lot of time trying to get Safe Mode to work again so I could see what was on the thing, but after a few hours of resetting and stuff I got nowhere so gave up. And I made many stupid mistakes building a Windows CD (nLite + unattended setup FTW) as I forgot about SP2 (the CD I had was only SP1 - don't usually deal with XP Home), so that was another few hours. Probably took about 6-7 hours in total, but a lot of them were unecessary. Left it stress testing for a few hours too while I was out just to make sure

I charged €60 in the end.

I once had a pipe dream of getting into PC repair, but after a few fixes for people and then the relentless badgering phone calls for months afterwards i've decided to only help out my immediate family with computer

I've considered it before as well but have been too lazy, which is probably a good thing in this case. I think having friends/family/friends of friends annoying me is enough!

After re-installing there seemed to be nothing wrong with the machine - SiS chipset and all. I guess it really was a case of Windows just unexplainably breaking...

PogMoThoin

L31mr0d wrote: »

I once had a pipe dream of getting into PC repair, but after a few fixes for people and then the relentless badgering phone calls for months afterwards i've decided to only help out my immediate family with computer problems.

The money is not worth the aggrevation and irritation. Plus it is all the more difficult to tell people not to call you when they are friends, or family friends.

Same ere, once had fella ring me @ 10'o'clock at nite 2 say his mouse wasn't workin. Was insistin me call up straight away. Told him Lidl have em for around a tenner. Had to get in the habbit of turning my phone off after 6, but it still doesn't stop gob$hites ringin everytime they cant do something simple. Had to give up eventually as i was plagued. People thought i was a free advise line. Not worth the hassle IMO.

watty

yes.

Offically you don't know where I live and I know nothing about PCs.

I was at a BB & really tired and they wanted me to "fix the Internet" as they knew who was paying the bill.

RoyalMarine

why not set up a premium rate number then

i do it often enough, and i charge €100 per call out, and 25 per hour after the second hour. or 100 flat fee if they deliver it to my house as i dont mind doing it while i do my own things at home.
upgrades or replacements are at their cost, and i dont charge any extra unless its serious work.

i tell all customers if they want any computer help, im willing to give it. only between 5 - 7pm. and never on sunday. i got annoyed with them not honouring this, so i bought a cheap phone, and give that out for now on. and i turn it on at 5 and off at 7. voice mails are ignored unless they are asking or a call out or repair etc.

and i only accept 1 month responsibility for any work i do. hardware fault or conflict with other hardware only. stupidity is all on them.

and ive often sent out a request for payment after phone support.
and only had 3 who didnt pay it.

zilog_jones

Wow, do you actually make a living out of all that?

Archytas

Does anybody actually make a living out of Home user PC repairs? I know a good few people who did it as students etc. me included, but never anyone older who's been able to keep it going for more than a couple of months. Also I always felt bad for mary the granny who didn't know how to set up her email and couldn't understand the good folks at eircom support. I'd always end up doing the job for free because it was so easy...

Me, I just don't have any patience and cant teach people how to fix things themselves... So I work a corporate gig where they don't want or have time to be taught... Much easier.

I still do work for family and friends and the like though.

RoyalMarine

i agree. i dont think anyone could make a living out of it.
unless they had the money behind them to open a shop or secure large contracts with a company.


honestly, id be lucky to make 1000 a month doing it.
i work 48 - 60 hours a week in my real job.
and i do the pc repair on the side.

occasionally i get a "big fish" who wants a gaming rig or something unique and i make a nice few hundred off them, but other than that its beer money.

Gadgetman496

1. State a reasonable price & stick to it. (Lose the job if necessary)

2. Give a reasonable time frame for the work (Reasonable for you, not them!).

3. Have set availability times & don't deviate (Under any circumstances)

4. Have a dedicated number & make sure it's a premium number too ( Active only during the specified times) switch it off outside these times.

5. Totally ignore voice messages. State this on your answering Msg. (Unless otherwise pre arranged or in extreme circumstances dictated by you, not them).
Put the onus on them to contact you (Not the other way around). Remember they're the ones with the problem, not you.

6. Above all, don't feel guilty. When you have a need to engage a professional (Other then a PC Techie) you respect them & accept that it's going to cost? Why? Because they have the knowhow, to do what you can't. Don't be a door matt, demand the same respect for yourself & your abilities.

If you want to be in this business & find you need to take some other type of part time work to cut a crust? So what? It's a matter of self worth.

Take the "Super Store Scenario"
You drop in the box.
They tell you it's going to take 5 days as they're very busy (You don't bat an eye)
You call back in five days & the machine is repaired, the price is xxx (You don't bat an eye)
Or you call back to be told that it was not feasible to repair! But there's still an invoice attached for their inspection & time (You don't bat an eye)
Try telling these people that it's for Granny & she hasn't much money & see how you get on.
You see, they have a big shop with a big sign & they can afford to put Ads in the papers & on TV, sure anything they tell us has to be right, Right?

Then you have the poor genuine Techie who's trying to cut a crust on his\her own:

They call to your house, spend time at the machine (in between beating the kids back as he\she struggles with the pint sized terrier hanging from the leg of his\her trousers, because their parents won't) so he\she decides to take the machine away? he\she spends time at the workshop or home, Google's to death if it's a sticky one, maybe comes to Boards for assistance, eventually sorts it.

The following day they make the return journey with the repaired machine, battle through traffic & eventually arrive at the house. He\she reinstates the machine, he's\she's safe from the brats now because they're at school, but the dog is poised in the corner of the room eyeing them up with sweet revenge in mind, so you finally get all the small talk & all the "Jesus you're great to be able to do all that, fair play to ya!" crap out of the way & you announce the charge. You get a litany of, "What?", "You are joking?", "I never thought it would be that much" "I wasn't expecting that?"..........

Why did they call you? and What were they expecting?.......




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Archytas

Nice post there gadgetman...

By saying the following I'm not insinuating that any of you are the following but...

There are a lot of Cowboys out there... And worse - perceived cowboys. Every time someone finds out what I do(I say - fix PCs and servers - If I was to say I'm a systems Administrator they would look at me funny) they launch into a story about how they were ripped off by some person. Even if they weren't. Either they were told what they were paying for or don't understand how things work. And I think thats a big problem so techs need to start telling people whats going on and people need to understand that anyone off the street cant do this(there's another problem - They think anyone can do it...).

Take the jeweller story for example... Man walks into a jeweller shop and hands the man behind the counter a diamond - He wants to know how much its worth. Jeweller gets out the magnifying glass and looks it over for about 2 minutes. Tells the man that its worth such and such. Then hands the man a bill for 75 euro. The man is flabberghasted - "75?? But you were only looking at it for 2 mins??" The jeweller replies - "It may have taken 2 minutes to examine the item but its taken me 14 years to gain that knowledge."

So there you go, maybe more people need to be educated that this stuff isn't all that easy...

mathias

I used to build PC's for people , stopped doing it about two years ago , at the time it was worth it , I only built high end gaming machines for people , and only built for people who knew a bit about PC's from a user point of view.

As regards to support , things werent too bad , but in all the calls I made to " fix " said PC's afterwards , I realised very quickly that you need a thick skin.
Of all the units I built only two call outs for service were genuine HW failures , in every case where there was a SW issue the new owner had done the damage himself , ( dodgy pirate software , messing about in the registry etc etc etc ) and I always charged 100 an hour for that.

Any genuine issue was fixed for free.

In that business , you need to stick to your guns and be professionally detached , otherwise people will walk all over you ,

I had one clown try to get me to fix ( for free !! ) a self installed water cooling system that had leaked all over the inside of the machine .... Needless to say , he was told where to get off !

Home call PC fixing is really the bottom of the ladder in the IT business , the grief you get off people will put you off in the end , unfortunately.