How much should I charge?

It was for explanitory purposes, not patting myself on the back. Anyone who wouldn't at least give her a massive slice of their charge, need's to spend a day in her shoes. Decent people are getting rare, I am proud to admit I am one, but unfortionatly it much of a commodity, but to those who need help.

Sorry for the rant, but Thank You for the kind words, its cool to get em when you don't really realize your "sounding like your fishing for them", if that makes sense


Mike

rubyrubyroo said:

i charge $35/quarter hour in St. Petersburg, FL of course that leaves me room to help them out as appropriate. When a Vet clinic needs help, I pretty much charge what I say, a friend maybe shave 25% off the labor or better even....One customer was a teacher that just got layed off, and her deaf daughter computer died, I have no gripes just charging for parts there, or even a rare no charge, it all averages out

mike

That sounds about right.

I know how hard it is sometimes for some less able people to pay the high rates involved. Depending on the customer sometimes I do work for free. I believe in karma, good and bad deeds will come around one day.

Out of curiosity how much is the going rate for OS format/reinstall and hardware upgrades (GPU, RAM, HDD, etc.)? Over here it's $120 and $100 respectively.

Roughly the same here, like at Best Buy/Geek-Squad type prices esp. Then there's the techs with little shops but opened doors 10 years ago and have solid clientele base who are nearly the same price, often charging considerably higher for professional offices (doc's, vet's, law offices)[a tech charged a law office I know well $500/ea.+tax to upgrade DDR1 mem from 256MB to 1GB on two OLD machines, nothing special about the sticks, he just didn't know that was a tad high], the struggling shops are starting to get close to half that, but can occasionally be shady (finding other "problems" needing fixed, or swapping out cords for problematic ones, to get repeat biz) I truly see it more with the struggling ones than the greedy higher paid techs!? odd. The smalltime or new shops that stick to their prices, move to a smaller shop in a month or so, then you'll be lucky to see a flyer on a telephone pole a month later. And then the ones that post online to get clients, are ether trying to use their skills to keep food on the table, or what you'd basically call a full out con artist, like a computer virus, exploiting any vulnerability in each customer on a person by person basis. No Idea of the "ratio" of the later/former but I discourage online solicitors of this type. I don't know how many of "my type" fly somewhat dark or "under the public radar", I started with a job, did it right, and was pleasant (rare apparently) listing to the cust's concerns,and explained to the best of my ability, all I could. I ended up with 4-5 ref's from the first cust, each of which grew exponentially, 100% word of mouth, and this is probably my first "weekend off" and it was "by choice", in...hmm 4-5 years, I can't even hire decent tech (degree, no degree, highly experienced or zero experience newbies) and I basically could have and treed to pay ridiculous wages/cash/under counter/whatever - they either show up 2 days late, never return calls, treat customers unacceptably, etc - I stop taking computers when I backlog ~10, I can work 2-6 a day and I'm nearly always back at 10 by the end of the day! A tech comes to work for me, walks out at the end of a day with 500 USD in his pocket, and I never hear from him/her again!


(BTW - although i usually try to get them to allow a remote connection setup for easier/therefore cheaper repairs from then on...almost all are fine w/it, and i can check out many problems on hundreds of computers at any given time, unless the issue prohibits it. And if a customer calls say at 3:45am "some new virus protection installed itself and found 34 viruses, should i enter my CC# to pay them for the service?":) I say "NEVER, please don't touch the computer whatsoever, I'll be right over" and I get dressed and get in my car and go fix it. I know of none else who does this, yet I probably drive by 5-6 shut-down repair shops on the way to her house. No secrets here, please copy my methods, anyone, everyone. I haven't taken the time (or technically the need) to make a single biz card, that i agree is unprofessional, but I hate making people wait and I cannot fix 10-15 computers a day, so why spread the word "OVER HERE!"


sorry for the lengthy post, and if i sound like I'm gloating, I'm not, but you may believe as you choose! I could photograph the 16 computers I am backlogging over the weekend if I come across as untruthful (of course i have ~40 stocked computers as well, so a picture will prove little.) My sole point besides answering your Q, is in my experienced opinion, service quality/reliability trumphs all but the complete absence of technical knowledge. period.

Amen to that brother.