how much do you charge?

[veedubfreak]

What people tend to forget is that most "pc savvy folks" like myself also already have a 40 hour job. Guess what, if im working on your computer, you are cutting into MY time.

 

[Trotter]

I bring their computer home and I work on it in my spare time, such as start a scan and do my own thing while it scans. I look up drivers and such on my computer, download them to a flash drive, and transfer it over. Once I have stuff cleaned up, I will hook it up to my internet connection to update it. I DO NOT use their computer to surf.

I don't charge co-workers much because I take a few days to get it done. They don't worry about the time because it is of no use to them screwed anyway. If someone wants it fixed NOW, they have to pay for the NOW privilege.

 

[Harper]

The main problem is this. I do not want to see other people fall in to the trap i fell into a few year back.

I used to be that kid on the street that used to fix computers for pocket money. And then one day, I got a real job fixing computers.
Few years later, I got my old next door neighbour desiding that he was going to by a computer from my work.
Then came the phone calls...............
How do I do this? How do I do that? Can I connect my DVD player up to my computer? Can my computer to this?

Few months later, he gets a virus at totally screws his computer over. He calls me up from work. I log the job in. I go out on site. I tell him what needs to be down and how much it's going to cost.
Customer :- I don't want to pay that.
Me :- Well, that is the company rate.
Customer :- I did not my a computer from you so I can pay the company rate.
Me :- Find another tech to fix this problem then.

It dawned on me that the only reason why he purchased a computer from me was so that he could just bug me about his computer problems and not pay.

I was keeping my boss in the loop of what exactly what was going on with this guy.
And then this guy takes it up to my boss directly claiming that I was not doing my job in a professional manner and that a virus should be covered under warranty.

And shortly after that, the problem went to court where this guy was trying to twist the story so to make it sound like it was me personally, not the company that supplied the computer and the support.
I lost count the number of times the judge said "You did not buy a computer from your next store neighbour's son, you baught it from a computer store"
And he was also trying to sue me personally for $10 000 worth of loss of income. To this day, I would still like to know who he pull that figure out of his arse.

in the end (about 12 months later), the court ordered us to return the to factory defaults and give it back to the customer. And out of the entire problem, I did not see 1 red cent from that ordeal.

Moral of the story is this.... don't under sell yourself to freinds because they are normally the first to start getting funny when you start acting like a professional.

Harper everything you've said here is pure Truth. If I could sig your whole thing I would

Harper is a little different situation than most of us because he has a business but he's right. For on-site service you can't do anything else and what he charges is a bargain in any case. On-site around here runs circa $90 USD and most of these folks aren't nearly as skilled as Harper must be by now and he's charging them less.

Some of my older return customer I have been charging more. Reason being is that I have kept my $80 + tax for the last 5 years. And in the main time, the price of petrol and nearly doubled. It also comes down to the post code. I got a nice rich area just 10 minutes drive from where I work where I will charge $100 to $120 per hour becuase :-
* They can afford it.
* To get there and back, I got to go through a toll way.


My boss has plans for me to take over the business in a few years. About the only thing that i am going to change is rates.

1. Still charge the first 1 hour, but then charge 1/4 hour blocks instead of 1/2 hour blocks.
2. Introduce an pensioner rate.

BTW, I charge the first 1 hour as my call out fee.


It's dedicated time, too. You can't go out and do stuff while on that job. Maybe Brinson would rather keep a stop watch and charge people only the fractions of a second he was actually clicking buttons but to people who do this professionally time is money and there is way too much liability to cut favors. An hour of our time is worth a certain amount.

It seems there are at least a few around here who just love being that on-tap techie because it makes them feel good or whatever. Sooner or later (or maybe they have already) everybody is just going to take gross advantage of you and your valuable time to fix every little thing and if you're anything like me you'll decide it's just not worth your time being everybody else's computer *****. There's a lot of other stuff I'd rather be doing than reformatting your hard drive for the tenth time this week so you've got to make it worth my while. All it takes is a couple of bad experiences and you'll see the light if you haven't already. Being tech support, and free at that, really seems to give most people license to take you for granted and walk all over you. At least you should be paid for your time.[/QUOTE]

 

[carnageX]

Only reason I do $20/hr side-jobs is because: a) I already have a job (albein part time, but this is a bit of extra cash on the side), b) it's a small town, so I can't really charge much, c) the fixes are usually fairly easy, and usually only take an hour. Usually for some of my friends I'll help them, because it's usually a 10 minute fix (telling or showing them how to do something), and I'm not gonna charge them $5 for telling them how to do something...and with my closest friend (who is also a techie), me and him help each other out for free regardless, because what one of us can't do, the other usually can do. And I usually only charge for the time that I'm there, for on-site calls (like when somebody calls me to their house, like my friend's mom does at times).

 

[Jorsoft]

Case in point, Harper, of why I don't build computers for people anymore (except for my very immediate family). The person you build it for always thinks you owe them free 24/7 tech support. A bad experience with an aunt/uncle who called me nonstop with similar questions put a stop to that. When i was selling computers retail I would even hand people I knew off to an equally knowledgeable associate because we all had an understanding not to sell to people we knew. Harper's story is an extreme of example of how people abuse the **** out of techies like us.

You'd be surprised how much less we have to put up with if we want even like $20 to do something as opposed to free. Far fewer people are begging for your help (having it be free is more important than having it done well) and those you do help become much more professional.

 

[Harper]

You'd be surprised how much less we have to put up with if we want even like $20 to do something as opposed to free. Far fewer people are begging for your help (having it be free is more important than having it done well) and those you do help become much more professional.

One the reasons why I focus on Point Of Sales and CCTV Systems. The people I deal with know that even if I they want me to tell them to plug a cable into the back of the PC as they are too stupid to realise that keyboard plug as come loose, I will charge them.


It's getting down to the point where I will only build computer systems for
* People that will pay me for my time.
* Freinds which know what to do if they have any problems, they know what to do. Therefore i might need to kick them in the right direction on what is wrong, and apart from RMA requests, I don't hear from them at all.
* Family.... well, they are family. Nuff Sed.

On christmas, I was 30 minutes into my christmas break and I had this one friend up asking for computer support. It really annoys me when about the only time you have a certain freind call you is when they have a problem with their computer.

Worst story I have head was that I freind of my father's have given the impression that he was getting invited for dinner. He put on his better clothing, comes cover to this woman house, and the first thing she tell him about is that there is a problem with her computer, could you have a look at it.
So much for dinner for 2.....

Over all. freinds call you for computer support because they don't want to pay a professional rate. So why should i give freinds a professional service?

 

[Luke]

when im dealing with friends i usually do it for free, unless its time consuming, even then i will only charge about $20 or i'll burn one ov there games or something. When im dealing with people that live around me i charge $40 an hour, if its easy i'll do it for free to be nice and for they come back to me instead of going to someone else.

 

[Harper]

when im dealing with friends i usually do it for free, unless its time consuming, even then i will only charge about $20 or i'll burn one ov there games or something. When im dealing with people that live around me i charge $40 an hour, if its easy i'll do it for free to be nice and for they come back to me instead of going to someone else.

That the problem. You start off for free for the little jobs. But the second you charge for a larger job, then they get funny about it.

 

[Nagasama]

i dont charge family anything. only parts, and lots of time i build them frankensteins out of my old parts. i built my mom a killer office PC with some older AMD dual core parts.
i dont charge friends anything. my friends are family too. if your friends aren't, they aren't your friends...they are accquaintences (sp?).
accquaintences, i charge whatever i feel is fair, not really an hourly rate. you can call geeksquad or whatever and get their rates for this and that...which are typically ridiculous, charge a little less than that, and then you can still sleep at night.
hey...is it even legal to charge tax on labor? its not in texas....doesn't mean that it holds for everywhere else....

 

[Harper]

i dont charge family anything. only parts, and lots of time i build them frankensteins out of my old parts. i built my mom a killer office PC with some older AMD dual core parts.
i dont charge friends anything. my friends are family too. if your friends aren't, they aren't your friends...they are accquaintences (sp?).
accquaintences, i charge whatever i feel is fair, not really an hourly rate. you can call geeksquad or whatever and get their rates for this and that...which are typically ridiculous, charge a little less than that, and then you can still sleep at night.
hey...is it even legal to charge tax on labor? its not in texas....doesn't mean that it holds for everywhere else....

Famly is understandable. After all, they had to put up with 21 year of my BS before I moved out, and they were there for my when I have fallen. So I will only charge them cost price for parts.

Thankfully most of my friend know what they are doing with a computer, so the most I have to do is give them a kick in the right direction to trouble shoot problems.
Eg. "Update driver", "Re-Install Windows", "I'll post it up on ToV/tech forums and I will let you know"

Accquaintences on the other hand fall in the same catigory as my customers I deal with at work. Sure I might only a little less or not be as strict on my time if I like them. But I am not going to racing out in my car to fix a computer problem.

Differences between Freinds and Accquaintences.
Friends at least call you up to see what you are doing this week end as they want to see a movie or go out some where.
Accquaintences are freinds that only call you up to see what you are doing this week end as they want to you fix their computer.

hey...is it even legal to charge tax on labor? its not in texas....doesn't mean that it holds for everywhere else....

Ever since Jack Boot Johnny Howard braught in the GST in 2000 it is.