Computer Business, Need advise:D

[moogle]

(at your own return postage cost)

Order from eBuyer
I thought Scan pickup at their cost too?

[Funkstar]

Order from eBuyer
I thought Scan pickup at their cost too?

Depends on the problem and when you return it.

[jim]

Order from eBuyer
I thought Scan pickup at their cost too?

They only do that if the item was delivered less than 28 days ago - I recently had a motherboard posted to me (a replacement) which I believed to be faulty. They didn't offer to pick it up, and then I had to chase it up to get them to do it, which they agreed to since it had only been posted to me under 28 days previously. Generally speaking, I have my parts longer than 1 month before they decide to blow up, so it's not ideal.

They also told me that if it wasn't faulty, I'd owe them £30-40, which is pretty crazy. Scan have cost me a fortune in postage and not found faulty fees over the last 6 months, hence why I pointed it out.

[Saracen]

I think you've already decided to dump the original idea, but in case you haven't, I'll add another one to the "don't do it" camp.

Some issues.

If you do this, you are trading, running a business, If you do that, you are liable for income tax on your profits. You will have to fill in a tax return, and that means you MUST keep proper accounts, or the taxman will clobber you. DO you know enough to do that yourself? If not, you'll be paying an accountant.

Next, because you're in business selling to consumers, there's a whole raft of legislation that applies, not least the sale of Goods Act and the Distance Selling Regs. Companies like Scan would, I'm sure, be able to tell you that there are consumers that will use and abuse these and that honouring the things you MUST honour will, sooner or later, cost you money. That's going to be an overhead you'll have to absorb.

Next, there;'s some insurances you'll need. Suppose you build a PC and sell it. Unfortunately, something goes wrong and it catches fire and burns the customer's house down. If what went wrong was done to something you did, you could find yourself being held responsible for the damage that results, and facing a court case and a bill for a couple of hundred grand in consequential losses. And if you hurt someone in that fire, if you cripple someone and they lose their livelihood as a result, a couple of hundred grand will look like small change. And if your insurance doesn't cover you, or you don't have any?? .....

Next, VAT. No, you don't need to register for VAT. At least, not initially. But there are a series of trigger points where if your taxable turnover goes over a threshold, or looks like it's going to, you must register. You'll be liable for the VAT in that case whether you register or not, so if you haven't charged your customers, you WILL end up paying it to the VATman yourself. Initially, it isn't too much of a problem because you don't have to register. But if you don't, you vcan't reclaim the VAT on your operating expenses, which will drive up your own costs and drive down your profit margins. If you do, you have to comply with VAT legislation and fill in the relevant returns.

Next, you are entering into a contract with your customers. What are the terms of that contract? What are you liable for, and what can you reasonably, legally and legitimately exclude liability for? If you don't do so, you open yourself up to all sorts of things. But if you try to exclude liability for somne things, it not only won't be legally valid, but might be criminal to try.

And on the subject of things criminal, be careful how you market and advertise. There are things which if you do them, you are committing a criminal offence, and things you might be committing a criminal offence by omitting to do.

So, on top of the accountants fees, add solicitor's fees.

Next, who on earth is going to buy an £1800 new PC, sight unseen, from a 15 year old on eBay? If you're planning on hiding your identity so they don't know you're 15, well, remember those things I said were criminal ....

If you're a trader selling to a consumer over a distance, the Distance Selling Regs will apply. For a PC, you're going to find the consumer has a period, usually 7 working days but if you don't get your information and processes right, it could be several months, where they can cancel. Irf they do, you MUST refund them, and within 30 days. If you don't, you're committing an offence. The ONLY deduction you can make from that refund is the cost of collecting the goods if they don;t send them back to you, and not always even that. And that applies whether you actually get the goods back or not.

So, you sell a PC, someone cancels and you have to issue a refund, even if you haven't had your PC back, and regardless of the state of the PC if you do get it back. The consumer does have a duty to return the PC to you, and to take reasonable care of it until they do. But if it's damaged, or ruined, or you don't get it back, you STILL have to refund them. Then, you have to sue them for damages over their breach of a duty of care. If this process goes wrong, you could find yourself in court if you refuse to refund, and out £1800 or a good part thereof if you do.


I'm sure I can come up with a few more reasons not to do this if you want, but if I haven't scared the knickers clean off you yet, nothing else is likely to make much difference.


Please .... don't do it.

[Technogeek]

For £40 a week, i think you would start to hate it, and that would be a shame

Personally, I think if you want to make money from your hobby, the best thing to do is start fixing peoples PCs for an hourly rate or something similar. You can then build up a customer base, one of which would probably ask you to build them a bespoke system. You can then either build to order or even tell them what to order, and you assemble it for them for a fee.

Much less hastle and a lot more opertunity for you to make sure they know where they stand as far as support and waranty is concerned.

I have to agree here, this is exactly what I do. My business is growing slowly and I build computers to spec for each individual customer.
You have also to consider warranty for the parts you supply your customers and how they will react if you do not provide what they are expecting for their money.
I charge a one off fee for my build and then make the computer the best for their budget. I also do repair and install at an hourly cost to the client. If your client asks you back for a second time you know you did a good job first time round. I also get clients to recommend me to everyone they know and get testimonials out of clients i have done good work for.
I love my job, I can fit it around my kids and have time for myself. by the way I'm a middle aged female. I suggest you get the Comptia A+ qualification too as having that or something higher will instill confidence in your customers.

[CrazyMonkey]

Dont bother mate, too difficult to get into especially if you are selling very high end systems.

I'd stick with repairing/upgrading computers - advertise locally (yellow pages etc). I've had some luck doing that.

[noveltylamp]

If I found myself jobless and unable to get a job, i'd put an advert in t'paper offering Virus and Malware Removal Services, no fix no fee but bloody make sure you fix it or you won't get paid! Chance of earning decent money for very little outlay, just make sure you know what you're doing e.g. take an image of the hard drive before you start playing, noone wants a fixed computer minus the family photos. If you build a customer base through that then you may get business upgrading the PCs, although these days if someone asked me if I'd build one for them i'd be more inclined to give them a link to the latest Dell bargain. I used to do quite a bit of fixing for family and friends, actually started when I was 11, first job was to upgrade memory in a 486 DX2-66 from 4mb to 8mb, earned a fiver, probably not worth it after paying to get into a computer fair to buy the memory, but have to start somewhere and I got to mall with a DX2 (I only had an SX50). These days former customers sometimes still come knocking, and it's more of a nuisance now, but now there's a minimum of £20 charge and hourly rate i set at double time for my proper job, the fact they still come means they must be happy with the job they get, I do know one got stung by someone in the paper charging them £80, who if i recall reinstalled XP home using a dodgy licence (despite PC having an OEM COA on!) and still didn't fix the problem.

There's reasonable money to be made helping people with wireless networks too, ISPs post them routers out and they don't have a clue what to do, and if next door get one too and it's on the same channel then poof. No outlay on your part, just go round and change the channel, takes minutes, earns you £20.

But as others have said, no money to be earned at all building systems, it's all about quantity, and even though I've only ever had one pre-built system in my life (aforementioned Packard Bell 486 SX 50Mhz, 4mb RAM, 350mb Seagate IDE HDD, Cirrus Logic 512k graphics) and started building my own when I was 12 (well the motherboard came when I was 12, a Tyan Tahoe 2 with 440FX chipset) the Pentium II 266MHz to accompany it was only delivered when I was 13, i almost bought a Dell myself last year, one of the Studio XPS with Core i7 920 for £699 - because you just couldnt buy the components for that price! Eventually decided my current system is still more than adequate, next upgrade will be GFX, probably to a 260.

[alex.morris09]

Wow, well I would like to say thanks to everyone that replied. Although most of the posts was advising me against . You've probs saved me allot of hassle (and trouble looking at Saracens post), some of the other ideas were great to, liked the malware removal one 8|

Anyways, thanks again
Alex

[alex.morris09]

If I found myself jobless and unable to get a job, i'd put an advert in t'paper offering Virus and Malware Removal Services, no fix no fee but bloody make sure you fix it or you won't get paid! Chance of earning decent money for very little outlay, just make sure you know what you're doing e.g. take an image of the hard drive before you start playing, noone wants a fixed computer minus the family photos. If you build a customer base through that then you may get business upgrading the PCs, although these days if someone asked me if I'd build one for them i'd be more inclined to give them a link to the latest Dell bargain. I used to do quite a bit of fixing for family and friends, actually started when I was 11, first job was to upgrade memory in a 486 DX2-66 from 4mb to 8mb, earned a fiver, probably not worth it after paying to get into a computer fair to buy the memory, but have to start somewhere and I got to mall with a DX2 (I only had an SX50). These days former customers sometimes still come knocking, and it's more of a nuisance now, but now there's a minimum of £20 charge and hourly rate i set at double time for my proper job, the fact they still come means they must be happy with the job they get, I do know one got stung by someone in the paper charging them £80, who if i recall reinstalled XP home using a dodgy licence (despite PC having an OEM COA on!) and still didn't fix the problem.

There's reasonable money to be made helping people with wireless networks too, ISPs post them routers out and they don't have a clue what to do, and if next door get one too and it's on the same channel then poof. No outlay on your part, just go round and change the channel, takes minutes, earns you £20.

But as others have said, no money to be earned at all building systems, it's all about quantity, and even though I've only ever had one pre-built system in my life (aforementioned Packard Bell 486 SX 50Mhz, 4mb RAM, 350mb Seagate IDE HDD, Cirrus Logic 512k graphics) and started building my own when I was 12 (well the motherboard came when I was 12, a Tyan Tahoe 2 with 440FX chipset) the Pentium II 266MHz to accompany it was only delivered when I was 13, i almost bought a Dell myself last year, one of the Studio XPS with Core i7 920 for £699 - because you just couldnt buy the components for that price! Eventually decided my current system is still more than adequate, next upgrade will be GFX, probably to a 260.

I actually found this post quit interesting, I have seen adverts on the bus stop in my village charging around £10 an hour with £20 minimum rate or something. He lists both malware removal and wireless network problems.

Pretty good idea

Thanks Alex

[Agent]

Also a quick question if you could answer it, would the PSU be sufficient for the GPU's? I am presuming they would be. But if not please leave e a quick comment

Alex - I was in your position once too, and I congratulate you on a well written post and trying to make money at your age

But in addition to what the other guys said, there is one other issue - very few people are going to take you seriously at 15. You could know everything under the sun, but your age is against you currently.

A bit of constructive criticism though. The fact that you have had to ask about PSU power limits suggests that you're not quite ready yet. These are the kind of questions which you should know 100% if looking to sell machines

Regards

[alex.morris09]

I have to agree here, this is exactly what I do. My business is growing slowly and I build computers to spec for each individual customer.
You have also to consider warranty for the parts you supply your customers and how they will react if you do not provide what they are expecting for their money.
I charge a one off fee for my build and then make the computer the best for their budget. I also do repair and install at an hourly cost to the client. If your client asks you back for a second time you know you did a good job first time round. I also get clients to recommend me to everyone they know and get testimonials out of clients i have done good work for.
I love my job, I can fit it around my kids and have time for myself. by the way I'm a middle aged female. I suggest you get the Comptia A+ qualification too as having that or something higher will instill confidence in your customers.

That sounds like a really good idea, I have looked on the comptia website, I presume it is the basic comptia+ qualification you need. If so I reckon I could do about 80% of whats on the list of things, (:with about 2-3 weeks revision) how much does it cost? and you will probably not know this one, but is there a certain age you need to be, I cant find it anywhere on the website.

Thanks
Alex

[alex.morris09]

Alex - I was in your position once too, and I congratulate you on a well written post and trying to make money at your age

But in addition to what the other guys said, there is one other issue - very few people are going to take you seriously at 15. You could know everything under the sun, but your age is against you currently.

A bit of constructive criticism though. The fact that you have had to ask about PSU power limits suggests that you're not quite ready yet. These are the kind of questions which you should know 100% if looking to sell machines

Regards

Thanks

Yes, I admit I don't know everything in the world about computers, and power supplies and volt rails and all that jazz always confuses me.

If I had actually decided to carry on this idea I would have probably taught myself, and learnt about all my grey areas. I wasn't completely sure so I checked on here, you have to learn somehow

I like the idea of a qualification, and I might look into it further

Thanks for the comment
Alex

[finlay666]

But in addition to what the other guys said, there is one other issue - very few people are going to take you seriously at 15. You could know everything under the sun, but your age is against you currently.

Not to mention you are breaking the eBay terms of use using it under 18.......

[alex.morris09]

Not to mention you are breaking the eBay terms of use using it under 18.......

I would use my mum or dads account, and if they took it seriously and it worked, I'm sure my mum would have created a proper one up for me. I love my mum

Theirs nothing wrong with that is there?

[Funkstar]

Theirs nothing wrong with that is there?

Well, yes. It's you thats using the account and you are under 18. So thats not allowed.

Just like you can't use your mums credit card to buy alchohol for yourself. Your mum may be letting you do it, but you are still breaking the law.

(props to finlay for picking up on this one)

[Technogeek]

That sounds like a really good idea, I have looked on the comptia website, I presume it is the basic comptia+ qualification you need. If so I reckon I could do about 80% of whats on the list of things, (:with about 2-3 weeks revision) how much does it cost? and you will probably not know this one, but is there a certain age you need to be, I cant find it anywhere on the website.

Thanks
Alex

You would need to take two Comptia A+ essentials and the Comptia A+ 202-602. You might also benefit from Comptia N+ which is the network qualification. When I took mine it was a few years ago 2003, and it cost around £80 per exam, it might be cheaper now. Do not be fooled into thinking it is an easy exam, it is one of the hardest I have taken bar the Microsoft exams. Take some of the free tests and if you can get 95% of the questions right in all the tests you do you are ready.
You would be doing yourself a favour too if you got hold of the Mike Myers A+ book, it is full of the stuff you NEED to know.

You can take the test at around 16 but it is not set in stone.

http://certification.comptia.org/a/default.aspx