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POLL: How much should I charge?

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Tell her to take you out for dinner and call it even. Unless it was really a bitch to put together for some reason, then you could charge a bit more.
 
Originally posted by: FrankyJunior
Tell her to take you out for dinner and call it even. Unless it was really a bitch to put together for some reason, then you could charge a bit more.
Click to expand...



That sounds like it would be fair to me. If she offers a nice home-cooked meal even better. MMMmmm. home-cooking is good.


Or you could just tell her to not worry about it. Most people have a tendency, when you tell them not to worry about it, to decide for themselves how much they should pay. My uncle had me build a computer for him, and he gave me the difference in what he would have paid for a store-built system and what he paid when I ordered in mass from newegg. 🙂

$150 shocked the hell out of me, and I tried to not accept but he wouldn't let me. So I bought some things for his kids and then bought a few toys for myself 🙂


 
Hmmm... some of you say to do it as a favor because she's family... yet you tell me not to help her when she needs it? That doesn't make sense.

I don't mind helping her... I did that before anyway with her crappy HP, and my uncle's crappy Sony. (yes, Sony is crappy... I replaced the power supply in it once, the floppy drive once, and the DVD burner twice)

I had the computer set up for her to see and use and she was ecstatic. I thought she was going to cry over the LCD, lol. I showed her some pretty equally equipped Dell's in the range of $1200-$1600... and some pretty equally equipped HP's without an LCD in the range of $700-1200. Actually... here's something I printed out for her to tell her what exactly she has...

Case - Antec Solution Series SLK1600 (Mini Tower w/ 300 watt power supply and 2 Front USB ports)

Motherboard - Epox 8RGA (nForce2 chipset with integrated GeForce4 MX video card and integrated SoundStorm soundcard capable of 5.1 Digital Dolby Surround sound)

Processor (CPU) - AMD Athlon XP2500 (333 Mhz bus, 512k L2 cache, 1833 Mhz with heatsink and fan included)

CD Drive - Lite-On DVD/CDRW Combo drive (reads DVD?s at 16X, writes CD?s at 48X, rewrites CD?s at 24X, reads CD?s at 48X)

Floppy Drive - Samsung 1.44 MB 3.5 inch floppy drive

Case Fan - 1 additional 80 mm Front Case Fan

Hard Drive (HDD) - Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 120 GB (7200 RPM, 8 MB cache)

Memory (RAM) - Kingston Value RAM, 512 MB (PC2700 333 Mhz CAS 2.5)

Network Card (NIC) - Siemens PCI 10/100 Ethernet Card

Monitor - Envision EN-7100 Si (17 inch LCD, 1280x1024 @ 60 Hz native resolution? 400:1 Contrast Ratio? 250 cd/m2? 30 ms typical response time? 45 watt power consumption MAXIMUM)

Anyhow... she asked me how much she owed me... I told her she didn't have to pay me anything, but if she wanted to then she could decide. The computer with the 17 inch LCD ended up costing $815... she wrote me a check for an even $1,000. I told her that was too much, and she told me if she had bought one somewhere else she would have ended up paying even more, so in her eyes, she's still getting a great deal. So anyway... she payed me $185 for building it... and she said she knows some people who might want one built too... now them, I would tell I won't provide "tech support" ... but for family, I do anyway, so I have no problem continuing to do that.

*EDIT* BTW... thanks for the opinions =) Seems as though a lot of you think this was a bad idea... but she's very happy with it, and I'm happy to help her out.
 
I don't think it's a bad idea to put stuff together for friends/family, but give yourself (and your friend/relative) some credit. They seriously don't mind paying you for your trouble. It might be $25, it might be $50, but it's not offensive to ask for it and/or include it in your price. You've saved them a ton of trouble by doing the configuration alone.
 
Tech support should be factored into any system you build for anyone that pays you. They are paying for a working product.
Even if you only charge them for the parts alone, you should offer tech support until several weeks (of use), have passed without any problems.

There's no way I'd build a rig for someone that paid me for the parts or parts & labor, and tell them to find support somewhere else. If the rig has been running for a while trouble free I'd still help them if I could.

The bottom line is...
* Don't skimp on component quality in favor of price.
* Don't install software that isn't known for it's compatability and stability.
* Don't build a system for someone that's known to be a pain in the butt.

* Do round up the prices to at least cover your time spent degugging and gas.
* Do think about your customers as if YOU are the only person who can help them (for the initial break in period anyway).
 
I have alot of family members that want me to charge them, I usually don't unless they are very insistant on it. It's always nice how a call home ends up in "Aunt so-n-so says she's having a problem with her computer......"
 


I got now that I usually throw something that I want into the total. Like something under$100 ex. hard drive, cpu ... whatever I need. For I know I will spend allot of time and gas and pull some of my own hair out, trying to explain why AOL has popups ... and why their dial up isn't as quick as the connection they seen at a store, and explain to them why 3 1/2 floppies are not good storage media for mp3's .. explain how to open windows explorer ...

hey one more thing .... make a ghost image of the drive after you get it running good ... you will cherish it later.
 
Don't do it. Instead, help her to configure a Dell system and let them handle all the warranty and tech support.
 
$50 is what I would charge. You preformed a service and you should be paid for it. Family would understand. You arent charging a huge ammount.
 
Here's my advice. Don't build computers for people. You will become tech support as long as you live.

But don't charge her if you already built it, she is family after all.
 
Originally posted by: ness1469
Originally posted by: FrankyJunior
Tell her to take you out for dinner and call it even. Unless it was really a bitch to put together for some reason, then you could charge a bit more.
Click to expand...



That sounds like it would be fair to me. If she offers a nice home-cooked meal even better. MMMmmm. home-cooking is good.


Or you could just tell her to not worry about it. Most people have a tendency, when you tell them not to worry about it, to decide for themselves how much they should pay. My uncle had me build a computer for him, and he gave me the difference in what he would have paid for a store-built system and what he paid when I ordered in mass from newegg. 🙂

$150 shocked the hell out of me, and I tried to not accept but he wouldn't let me. So I bought some things for his kids and then bought a few toys for myself 🙂
Click to expand...


I've always been told when someone gives you money, to just take it and say nothing about it. Trying to not take it is a very impolite/dishonorable gesture. Then again, these were always asians, but I do respect this ideology.
 
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