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How much to charge?

Z

Zeeliv

Golden Member
Recently a friend's dad tried putting together a system from multiple bits of other comps and couldn't get it running himself. So he offered to pay me to get it running and put NT on it. I've finally got everything working after hunting down old drivers and diagnosing (or attempting to anyway, got some help here...thanks CRV) the problems, and I have NT4 SP6 on there running fine...but I don't know how much to charge. I said, "whatever you think is fair" and he told me to just name a price when I came over with it. How much would any of you charge? I basically stripped down the system and rebuilt it, updated the BIOS, partitioned and formatted, installed NT4 SP6 (burned him a SP6 and drivers CD), and hunted down NT drivers for old hardware (he has used 98 up until now).
 
Hmm... 50-75$? I dunno. Just depends on how much time you spent on it..
 
I would agree with Eli and probably charge about 50+ bucks.

Remember though that unless they are right into computers they will basically have no idea what you actually did, so what I would do would be to fire up Word/Notepad/Works/Office ect. and make up a nice looking invoice with a list of everything you did and at the bottom right corner put:
All Labour incl. parts and materials (CDR disk ect.)---$50.00
 
A friend's dad? Nada! Tell him he may be able to help you out later. I'm thinking along the lines of helping you get a job somewhere, helping you install a car part or building a deck. Who knows? I generally don't charge friends for PC work.
 
Yup, I agree with Ornery,
if this is your close friend's dad, it is free,
unless he starts bugging you with building more systems
(then $50 to $100 is fair I think).
 
My friends computer is always giving them troubles, well not the computer, but the users of it cause trouble for it. I have to format every 6 months. They also refuse to buy a new power strip, and are using a 15 year old power strip without filtering or surge protection, and they thing its adequate. That power strip results in so much bad power that causes HD corruption etc. Well they insist on compensating me for my work. Oh yeah I built the computer originally for them, and they also insist on keeping AOL. Its just the fact of really poor power, stupid users and AOL that cause it trouble.

So what I let them repay me with is a DVD movie, about $20-30. I consider it worth it. Plus my friend works at walmart so he gets a good price on it.
 
Warrenton--Sounds like you're being fair. I tell 'em AOL = SOL. If it goes on, I won't touch it again. I figure I'm doing my part to improve the breed.
--Randy
 
I generally charge 15% of the parts cost to build a computer.

For a friend, I drink their beer and coach as they assemble their computer
and install the OS themselves.
 
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