Price for work

thatsgood

Hi everyone,

This is my first message so if its in the wrong place im sorry and feel free to move it.

I'm just wondering, I recently had a local IT guy do a job on my laptop for me, it was pretty badly infected with what he called 'Adware' and virus's. I was constantly getting pop ups and anti virus program kept running scans and saying i had 100's of virus's but i never even installed the program.

Any how he said he would make a backup of all my important files, clear the laptop and re-install windows vista and put my files back. He did it all really quickly he had the laptop for a day or two and dropped it back to me with everything working perfect and all my files back as well. He said he would drop the bill to me in a few days.

That's what my question is, how much should I be expecting to pay? I'm not overly worried about it costing to much as I've always heard nothing but good things about him, I just want to have a rough idea. Can anyone help?

Thanks

Verres

This is gonna sound narky, but it's not meant like that: you should have asked him first, because no matter what he says you'll be in a difficult situation.

FWIW, I reckon it'll be ~150, depending on how long it took him.

Yawns

Should be under 150. It doesn't take a lot of effort to do but it can be a time consuming process. Whislt he starts everythign running etc he can be doing other work but he has to constantly check on it to make sure it's going ok.

I would guess maybe he will bill you 100 - 120. If he's a friend or it's a favour it'll be prob around 80.

marc1

I would say around 150.
I do this all the time for friends and family (for free), it is a very tedious process:

2 hours to backup the data
1 hour to clean that data
1 hours to re-install the operating system
2 hours to re-install the programs & anti-virus
2 hours to put your data back onto your computer.

8 hours @ 20 Euro would be 160 Euro.

If he is honest he will also try and sell you a proper internet security package. (Unless he wants you business again in a couple of months :-))
If you trust him, go for whatever he recommends.

Marc

aamurray

I agree - ~150. PCWorld are advertising this service for a lot more and they will not guarantee that they will save your precious documents, pics, music, videos etc.

I regularly perform this service and charges run from €50 to €150 depending on the amount of time I have to spend on the system. The worst case scenario is when I have to remove the HD, attach it to a "clean" system, extract the data, clean the drive and then re-install it as this is adds more time to the above detailed process.

If your guy is any good he should install some free anti-virus and anti-adware software as part of the deal and then recommend an upgrade to a security suite which you can buy.

thatsgood

Verres wrote: »

This is gonna sound narky, but it's not meant like that: you should have asked him first, because no matter what he says you'll be in a difficult situation.

FWIW, I reckon it'll be ~150, depending on how long it took him.

Your fine I know what you mean, I'm just looking for a ball park figure so I know what to expect, and if he charges me less then I know to give him a bit extra. He is gonna drop around the bill later so I'll know for sure, thanks for the idea's

Dixy

I run www.pcscomms.com and we do this all day long for €85.
Now that only makes money when we are doing 3 or 4 at a time so it would depend on how busy he is, e.g if he only has your laptop to do that's his whole days wages but with several to do he can make money at lower pricing.
Tbh if he is charging €150 I would consider it a bit steep depending on the size of your backup.

thatsgood

hi guys

just to check back with you all, got my bill yesterday, he only charged me €50. I was extremely grateful so i gave him €100 for it as some of the stuff on the laptop was irreplaceable!

That leads me to another question, say something were to happen my hard drive, like it got formatted by accident or something along those lines, whats the general charge for data recovery for something like that? Don't worry i've made sure to make back ups of all my important stuff, this is just something that popped into my head!

Dixy

Data recovery on a mistakenly formatted drive is fairly straight forward with the right software, its just time consuming depending on speed and size of the drive.Again between 50 and 100 Euro would be average.
Data recovery on a damaged drive is something altogether more difficult as it can require a specialist company to rebuild the platters and motors and i have heard quotes of upwards of 4 and 500 Euro.

dreamers75

€50 is more than enough unless hes as good as the person above who takes 8 hours to complete a 45 minute job (including 2 cups of tea).

Take stuff off, format/install Nlite windows , put stuff back on.

marc1

dreamers75 wrote: »

€50 is more than enough unless hes as good as the person above who takes 8 hours to complete a 45 minute job (including 2 cups of tea).

Take stuff off, format/install Nlite windows , put stuff back on.

:-) Well I would like to see you try do a job like that in 45 minutes. I have never charged anyone for doing this, but as I said I do it quite often, I can tell you it takes a long time if you want to do it properly.

If you backup everything reinstall windows and copy everything back then you will be where you started!