IT Repairs Costs

[Stringent]

OK, probably many of you have similar issues, I get asked to bits and bobs work by friends, friends of friends, my friends girlfriends cousins dog walker etc to fix/help them with their PCs. Most problems that come my way I am able to deal with. I can generally keep their data or recover it before reformatting, or repair their PC without too much hassle.

I was wondering, some of them say how much will it cost. This is where I kinda fall down, while I have no problem in doing stuff for mates, others well, maybe because I don't know them. So what would an ideal costing be? I have given it some thought.

Plumbers charge like £80 call out, and then I dunno, £15 per hour or something? Not that I am saying this should be the price, but when it comes to IT people think you are taking the mick (OK you think its over priced for plumbers!). One day IT training can be in the region of £500+ pounds depending, recovering hard disk data is expensive. I know some firms charge buisnesses £500 for a day even if a job takes like 5mins!

I work for another company doing their IT they don't need a full time worker, and charge them £30 an hour. I know that this should be easily double to be the market rate.

Windows XP takes about 2-3 hours reinstal with updates and patches depending on the system. So that is about £60-£90 in it self going by my hourly rate. Recovering data off a hard drive requires taking the PC apart, possibly another PC to connect and copy the data too (there are other methods I know).

Just interested in other peoples thoughts. What I want to do is when people ask me 'how much' I can go "here is my price list" kinda thing. Also what about all that phone IT support you give?

Hope I've made some sense!

[MSIC]

It's something that i've thought about too, but since i am not qualified to work in the field I'm not sure it's fair for me to charge anything - that said I am known as the IT guy for work, home, friends etc and many many is the time that I either build or repair stuff (at cost price only).
Friends often give me a bottle of wine or 2 for sorting out a problem, or give donations of beer or coffee or something, but i'd personally feel wierd for charging when they could go to a regular shop and pay money for some other unfortunate bugger to try to identify incompatibilities between a USB device and a chipset driver (these ones really piss me off).

The reason I do it is because I dont like mates or family to get ripped off when often I can just say "oh you need so and so program, download for free from wherever" - typical example was a mate who bought a PC with a free trial of McAffee antivirus on, the trial ran out (4 months ago - has not been protected since) and pestered him to pay for keeping the subscription. 1 hour later (after finally getting Mcaffee off the computer after going into safe mode) he had AVG free edtion doing the job with Zonealarm. Job done, and 2 bottles of red for me.

[Splash]

The way I always do it is ask what it's worth to them. If what they say is completely unacceptable just don't do anything for them in future. I made £120 building a PC for a guy I work with this way - not bad for 4 hours or so of work - I'd suggested I'd do it for beer money, and it was worth £120 to him. I'd specced him out a box with better suited spec than he would off the shelf and even after paying me he still saved about £100.

I'd rather have friends/family come to me if they need help retrieving some data they thought they'd lost than goto PC World...

[Moby-Dick]

I've recently had a simlar problem which I solved by getting a few friends to phone a couple of ads in the paper and get their costings.

One I was given was £20 callout / 1st Hour and £10 for every subsequent hour

or £10 an hour if they bring the PC to him

I'd be tempted to hike those a little bit , but it depends if you feel you are offering more than the bare minimum - I like to build a PC and not have to come back to it so will try and make it as resilient as possilbe etc.

Try and keep phone based stuff down to a bare minimum - if they want further training above and beyond "where did you put my files" then charge

I find using a knoppix / ERD Cd and aportable hard drive makes recovering data easy too!

[Stringent]

Yeah Moby-Dick I use those as well, I also have some Windows PE tools for bits, but ERD is a lifesaver particulally if they have given you the wrong passwords!

I'd say I'm qualified, have Microsoft and Cisco qualifications, as well as full time employment in a Network Department sorting out the good, bad, ugly and the REALLY annoying!

I tend to stay away from building PC's for people, I would point them to a manufacturer so I don't get ay come back, then they can just ring Dell or whoever for support.

[Lee H]

Ohhh don't mention PC repairs to me. I've a few so called mates who think it's okay to loose contact with me for a couple of months and then ring me up on a Sunday and expect me to drop everything as their laptop/PC has been virus infected/crashed/windows is fubarred and go running to recover their data.

You know what - I've told a few where to go and jump and it felt good

[Mike Fishcake]

At our place we usually charge a £10 or £20 minimum evaluation charge (depending on the type of system and suspected fault), which is included in the final cost of any repair we do.

The usual charges are £10 to fit and test RAM in a desktop or laptop (assuming the RAM is easily accessible, if we have to dismantle it, the cost may go up to £20.

We work on a basis of £10 per 15 minutes, £20 per half hour and £35 per hour. We usually quote people in advance. Some jobs take longer than the amount of time we quote for, some take less. We hardly ever charge above £55, and, apart from exceptional circumstances, don't charge more than £70 (2 hours) even if a job takes all day.

Data recovery attempts are charged at a minimum price of £35 evalution, if successful then an additional £10 per DVDR of data required. We tend to have a 50-50 success rate of data recoveries.

OS reloads are usually charged at £35, often going up to £55 if the user is unable to supply the driver discs and we have to spend ages trawling the web for them. If the OS reload is a recovery disc, we usually just tell the owner to try reloading it themselves first because we feel a bit cheeky charging someone for plugging their laptop in and pressing Enter a few times

[Mike Fishcake]

Ohhh don't mention PC repairs to me. I've a few so called mates who think it's okay to loose contact with me for a couple of months and then ring me up on a Sunday and expect me to drop everything as their laptop/PC has been virus infected/crashed/windows is fubarred and go running to recover their data.

Yeah, when I started noticing a theme from certain people phoning me, and I saw their number come up on my phone screen, I answered "Hello Mike's technical advice line, how may I help you?"

They got the idea fairly quickly ;-)

[Moby-Dick]

Yeah Moby-Dick I use those as well, I also have some Windows PE tools for bits, but ERD is a lifesaver particulally if they have given you the wrong passwords!

I'd say I'm qualified, have Microsoft and Cisco qualifications, as well as full time employment in a Network Department sorting out the good, bad, ugly and the REALLY annoying!

I tend to stay away from building PC's for people, I would point them to a manufacturer so I don't get ay come back, then they can just ring Dell or whoever for support.

Likewise - I was using Build in a software sence. Let them deal with that offshored centre when their Dell dies - that'll teach them to say "but I can get it from Dell for x" when I've just spent 20 mins speccing and costing a box for them

Nice Costing Mr Fishcake - seems fair priced. I assume all of those are where people bring the machine to you ?

[[GSV]Trig]

I usually just go out to do cleanup jobs on ppls machines that shouldnt be allowed to have PC's, install av, install cleanup, spybot S&D/Adaware then just leave them scanning, takes about 2 hours but you generally dont have to go back often unless they really balls stuff up, £20 for the cleanup and then a fixed cost when you do upgrades, reinstalls and the likes, I tend not to go down the hourly rate thing as this kinda thing is home user and when you mention hourly rates they tend to get a bit hesitant...
"Oooo my PC's buggered"
"I'll have a quick look, if it just needs a clean up then its £20, if its really buggered then I'll backup what I can and reinstall windows, £40"......

Makes it easier

[[GSV]Trig]

Yeah, when I started noticing a theme from certain people phoning me, and I saw their number come up on my phone screen, I answered "Hello Mike's technical advice line, how may I help you?"

They got the idea fairly quickly ;-)

I find the..

"Hi chap, what ya broke"

convo starter works well

[Moby-Dick]

Yeah when it comes to home users I think they like to be given an idea of how much it'll cost well in advance !

[Stringent]

One guy is the compant director, he says "Bah sick it on the company invoice" I don't mind 6 hours of reinstalling XP Home, updates, programs and set up a Wireless Network, thats £180 thank you! Ching Ching!

[rox0r]

I've always worked on favours. I fix your PC, you owe me a favour of equal 'value'. I won't forget and I will call it in someday.

Keeps it sweet and means I've always plenty of favours in the bank for a rainy day

[directhex]

i've gotten to the age where i find "no" to be a far more enjoyable response than "twenty quid an hour"

"i've got a nasty computer virus "
"well i told you what would happen if you kept clicking on spam in outlook express. not my problem"

"waaaa, i can't play dvds anymore"
"i warned you what would happen if you watched american dvds without using the player i told you to use, didn't i"

i'm far too old to sit there ****ing about with spybot and the like for hours on end, fighting a losing battle with porn popups. some jobs aren't worth being paid for

[rox0r]

LoL I give people one 'free chance' with making an arse of their machine. I'll clean up your mess once and once only, after that you're on your own.