How much should I charge?

[nboy22]

I am a little confused as to what to charge my girlfriend's boss for my computer repair services. I am trying not to rip her off, yet not undervalue myself. I know quite a bit about computers but I have never really been big on fixing them for other people except for family friends, so I have little background in actually charging people.

The first time I had to drive out about 15 mins with my girlfriend to the location, her boss had a network printer issue. It took me about 30 mins-1 hour to resolve. The resolution included finding the new IP address of the printer. She had it in DHCP mode and the whole system got reset, so the printer was assigned a new IP address. I found the new IP, opened up the hosts file in the system32 directory and inserted the new IP where the old one was. After that, I removed norton internet security and installed Mcafee total protection (I did not supply the software/serial key). That's just the first part of the repair, and now the boss is asking me how much I want.

The second part is upcoming still, I am going to replace the 256 mb of ram she's got in her business laptop with 2 gb of ram, a new battery, and I will be replacing the keyboard as well. I am not worried about the cost of the parts, she will pay me that. I am more worried about what I should charge her for all of the work. She will be paying me for the installation of the ram, battery, and keyboard later. (I did spend some time researching Ram, pulling up review sites for the battery website I'm going to purchase the battery from, and also replacing the keyboard).

I would greatly appreciate if someone could direct me in what to charge for both the first and second part!

 

[rasczak]

I generally charge $50.00 an hour for repairs/reinstalls outside of my circle of friends and family. Check craiglist to see what most people are charging and go with the average if you don't want to over charge. Friends and family are generally free, but I do give invoices for tax purposes.

 

[JDMnAR1]

If you have a local Best Buy, you can call them up and get a Geek Squad quote for the same work to get an idea of what retail pricing is in your area too.

 

[finite automaton]

Originally posted by: rasczak
I generally charge $50.00 an hour for repairs/reinstalls outside of my circle of friends and family. Check craiglist to see what most people are charging and go with the average if you don't want to over charge. Friends and family are generally free, but I do give invoices for tax purposes.

You give them an invoice for $0? Or $50? If the latter, that's really cheesy.

 

[spacejamz]

you do realize that you will his tech support for ANY problem on that laptop now right? how much are you gonna charge for that?

 

[rasczak]

Originally posted by: finite automaton

Originally posted by: rasczak
I generally charge $50.00 an hour for repairs/reinstalls outside of my circle of friends and family. Check craiglist to see what most people are charging and go with the average if you don't want to over charge. Friends and family are generally free, but I do give invoices for tax purposes.

You give them an invoice for $0? Or $50? If the latter, that's really cheesy.

I do it for my own tax reasons. I explained it to everyone when i first started working on their stuff. They're cool with it. It's just a way for me to keep track of my mileage. And no it's not for fifty dollars

 

[Elias824]

Tell them their company needs to hire you as an outside consultant, and you need to be paid a sallary.

 

[jpeyton]

Two Wendy's Double Stacks and a medium Frosty.

 

[Ramma2]

Just don't say whatever; I had the pleasure of tracking down out of print restore CDs, doing a full restore + updates on a tower for a friend of the wife. The cds cost me like 32$ shipped, and when she asked what she owed I told her materials cost and whatever she felt for labor.

2 twenties were my reward. 8$.

So don't say whatever, I don't anymore either. 50$ an hour sounds good.

 

[V00DOO]

Originally posted by: spacejamz
you do realize that you will his tech support for ANY problem on that laptop now right? how much are you gonna charge for that?

Yeap, if his computer has a pop-up or IE crashed you are on the hook for a long time.

 

[Wheezer]

shop around see what others are charging then undercut them by $10-15.

You have virtually no overhead so why charge like you do?


He/She is not only paying you for your time but your trust....I cannot overstate this.....with as much information as people keep on their systems, pictures, phone numbers, taxes, CC#'s, bank statements, etc. etc. they want someone they can trust to work on their system that won't piss down their back and tell them it's raining....that is worth something IMO.

People go to places like Best Buy and Staples because they think that the big name will have their back if something goes horribly wrong....they won't and on top of that you have nosy little bitches who like to read other peoples shit....is it REALLY worth it?...when I explain this to people they often look at me like I just told them their house was robbed.

As far as being THE go-to guy from now on...why not? if he is going to toss his money at someone why not make it you?


Let's say you charge $25/hr ...how many places are you going to go work for that will pay you that much, how may places that do pay you that much, make you work like a dog for it, and if you do have a full time job making that kind of money, after Uncle Sam and everyone else gets their hand on how much do you actually get to take home? 20?, 18?,15?

So you are working harder to take home less...does that make sense? Of course I am assuming this is a cash deal.

Personally I think $25-$30/hr is a reasonable amount to charge for this kind of thing...but like I said it will depend on the competition and the area in which you live.

Just don't let him/her take advantage of you and don't screw them over....your GF will be the one that pays the price.

good luck.

 

[adairusmc]

$50 an hour if they bring it to me, $75 an hour if I go to them.