how much for services

GoneShootin

how much would be an acceptable amount to pay for services of :

1) Deleting Primary Partition and Recreating new one
2) Formatting Hard Drive
3) Installing Win98SE
4) Installing and Configuring all hardware/sofware
5) Installing Net Settings

leeroybrown

Think about it on a time basis:

How much time do you think it will take you to re-install and re-configure everything. Then work out how much would be reasonable for your time (taking into account who you are doing it for)

GoneShootin

installing windows as we speak

its just that you get many different quotes from different companys. wana make sure i charge a reasonable amount, and not get robbed either

id like to know other peoples experiences ?

Gerry

I'd be looking at a bare minimum of 35 euro, more if the machine was troublesome. (on a fairly new machine that wouldn't take more than an 90 minutes) Its a bloody good question though, I never know how much to charge either. The thing to bear in mind along with how much time you spend, is how likely they are to call you about problems which they have created themselves afterwards, ie if they know nothing they may blame you when they mistakenly delete all their icons from the desktop.

MarcusGarvey

I charge £20-£40 an hour or part thereof.

£20 per hour minimum and if they're rich I charge more. The professional companies are something like £80 minimum and £60 an hour.

Gavin

I usually charge 25 quid an hour with a 50 quid callout fee. That tends to be mickeymouse work though. If I am doing serious, week long setting up a network type of thing, it would be around 50 quid an hour.

Gav

sceptre

Originally posted by Gone Shootin
how much would be an acceptable amount to pay for services of :

1) Deleting Primary Partition and Recreating new one
2) Formatting Hard Drive

Under half an hour

3) Installing Win98SE

An hour (though obviously you spend most of it drinkig tea

4) Installing and Configuring all hardware/sofware

Assuming there's an office install and a few other bits, under half an hour (assuming all driver discs for odd hardware are present)

5) Installing Net Settings

A minute
[/B][/QUOTE]

So that's two hours tops. I'd feel like I was taking the mickey unless I charged somewhere between £40 and £60 depending on how nice they were. Add some time (and perhaps cash) if they want you to show them the basics of Outlook or the intaweb

Boston

i did that about 3 times for a friend once in one day, took about 5 hours. i didnt charge a penny, but i got some toast.

Gerry

excellent, I can charge more in future, and still undercut you guys. This is already the most worthwhile thread on the tech board, ever.

bkehoe

I generally look for €30 for reinstalling/fixing a software problem on a PC provided they bring it to me. €20 to go to computer, more if hardware needs to be replaced (depends).

Brendan

mayhem#

I charge €38 per hour and get lots of business just because of my rates. Most support companies charge €60 up to €150 per hour. I have been told Dublin is even worse...

Boston

you guys are kiding me right, that much. i could be be earning loads, the amount of problems ive had with pcs, and sorted them all out myself, i doubt that alot of tech support would ahve been able to do so as quickly,

MarcusGarvey

Due to the whole Irish mindset that if something is cheap it has to be crap I don't charge too cheap price. I find if you don't most people will think your some kind of cowboy. Its stupid but its true.

I've seen this with websites too. Myself and a friend redid a website for this company after they spent 10k with another webdesign company who just reused the template from another website they did but changed the colour.

We were lucky in that we had a contact in the company who was able to tell us how much to charge. He got us to charge double as the company would not even talk to anyone charging less than 4k as they thought they must be amateurs. Also another rule is if its over 5k its a design feature, if its under 5k its a problem with the website.

I find that its mainly an Irish thing though.

jbkenn

Here's my 4c worth, here is a simple rule of thumb
Take what you want to earn per week and multiply by 3 e.g. (€500 X 3 = €1500 /40 = €37.50 per Hour). You will be lucky if you can charge for more than 4 hours per day in any given day, someone has to pay for the time you spend getting drivers, software patches etc., If you have a knowledge value it and charge accordingly, and remember you get the same grief no matter what you charge. NEVER NEVER order anything for anybody unless they pay for it up front otherwise you will be fairly busy on the For Sale board

jbkenn

GoneShootin

end result

charged €100 on the button. Still a great bargain as i took it on satudray and had disk formatted, win98se isntalled, all software and other apps back up, and all backed up works files in order, and had it back to his place of work sunday, with virus definitions updated a mere 5 mins before i had to run to get the bus to CIT

leeroybrown

I really gotta get a few bits of this re-install work. The money sounds very good once you have a good working knowledge of H/W and Software. And when you consider the number of people who don't know anything.

Clinical Waste

In agreement with MarcusGarvey & not too much with the Sceptre, to do this job properly, (including customised & not the MS standard setup), all current drivers downloaded, a custom Office setup, configuring of the system right down to a clean start-menu and of course the mandatory bootable ghost image of the completed system on a CD for the easy 2nd time installation (after the custard has messed it up) is at least a 3hr job averaging £120