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For people who do PC repair work

A

Arkitech

Diamond Member
I constantly get asked by people to do help them with PC problems and for the most part I either refer them to someone else or depending on the problem I'll do the work for free if its a family member or a close friend. I've finally decided to take on a few jobs and try to earn a few extra bucks but I'm not really sure how much I should charge for certain services. I was wondering if you guys could give me an idea of what you charge your customers.

thanks
 
If its a co worker or a "friend of a friend" yeah the half rate thing works well. Try to think ahead and see how much its going to cost you time wise, and charge them an hourly rate that wont make the final bill be more then $100 or so. Anything sub $100 usually seems like a good deal to most non tech savvy peeps, i finally jsut started charging $25 an hour flat rate for anyone not in my immidiate family or circle of friends. The more outlandish the work though i charge more because i hate doing it. when it gets into laptop component repair, like the "i ripped the connector off my board" deal, i charge alot more, some laptop places charge $100 or more an hour for soldering and component repair, so i charge $50 an hour or so. Half price is a good place to be, and does save your "customer" quite a bit of coin....
 
Wow you guys are suspiciously cheap. I say that because allot of people look at you and look at prices from geeksquad/firedog and wonder why your so much cheaper. In the end $25 to $50 an hour is selling yourself short. Not only do you have to charge for your time involved but you also need to consider wear and tear on your car and the convenience your offering by making house calls. Not everyone does flat hourly rates. Many people set up a pricing scheme that they follow. Something along the lines of a flat rte for diagnostics then other flat rates for other standard services like program installation and system cleaning.

As for me i charge between $75 and $80 and hour. The first hour is always in that range weather I'm there for the full hour or just 5 minutes. Drive time is always calculated into the charged time. When i step out my door the clock starts. Now additional hours i stay flexible on based on what needs to be done. If its a installation of the OS then I'm not charging as much since I'm spending about an hour just watching a status bar. While the geeksquad charges about $120 for the OS install i generally walk away with about $100 after an OS install.

The key to making some good money from service work is the little things you add. Make a habit of cleaning the dust from the system as a free of charge service. Also offer some tutelage on the software applications they use. Offer to show them some shortcuts or features they may not know about. You also don't want to be giving "deal" to friends. Family is one thing but friends can suck you dry. But if you really want to get serious about this then offer service plans. Where they pay you a monthly fee that gives them free diagnostics and gets you out to there house every few months to clean up the dust in the system as well as run scans on the HDD for viruses and Spy-ware and defrag the system. Just the basic maintenance we enthusiast perform all the time without thinking about it. Most people just expect the system to take care of itself and think a single virus and spy-ware program will handle any problems. Plus they don't want to take the time to run a defrag them selfs. Its just like cars. Anyone can charge the oil in there car but most people rather pay someone else to do it for them. Difference is the oil charge is always done a a financial loss. This gets people in the door and while the oil change is being done they are checking for any problems they can find in hopes of getting you to pay them to fix the problems.
 
Originally posted by: mpilchfamily
Not only do you have to charge for your time involved but you also need to consider wear and tear on your car and the convenience your offering by making house calls. Not everyone does flat hourly rates.
Click to expand...

I don't do house calls, they have to bring the PC to me. But thats just my policy.
 
$40-45 flatrate fee. Most fixes take 2-2.5 hours, so its hardly making me rish, but I use the $$ for my 'slush fund' to buy PC hardware, and my wife doesn't get mad for buying all the gear I buy.
I do not advertise at all, as my only business comes from the teachers that I work with (I am an IT guy at a school dst).

I continue looking for the best tools to clean a drive, but Schadenfroh's malware automated script is my personal favorite, and I highly recommend that due to its time saving multiple automated scans:

Schadenfroh's scripted malware removal thread
 
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