what would you charge for pc repair reates, etc...

[ceez]

zup peeps,

trying to come up with decent repair rates for people that come up to me to fix their pc's. I am in miami florida and would like to know what you think an average/competitive price would be for:

1- virus/spyware/adware cleaning

2- add/install new hard/software

3- home/office network installation rate per pc

for 1, it can take up to 4 hours to completely clean a badly infected PC, an hourly rate of 40 or 50 would freak out your end user with a bill of 160 to 200 $$$'s

for 2, sometimes installing a modem/network/sndcard/hd etc can take about 10 minutes. I would charge 40 rate, 1 hr minimum.

for 3, for home user I would prob charge 50 per PC to configure and connect to their network, business users I would up it to 65-70 bucks. All this assuming that they already have the cables ran, how much for that?

So if you could give me your thoughts it would really help me in deciding what would be a good rate and stick to it...also trying to start my own little biz!

thkz everyone

cheers

[CoffeeFiend]

I think you're dreaming here. The IT market is flooded, and we got MCSE kids working at minimum wage in computer shops. One of the places I buy charges 29$ cdn (about 20 USD) for ANY JOB (no matter what), and there's a lot of kids around that would do it for maybe less than that.

1) You're not gonna do that by hand. The main thing is having the software to do it. Some of it is free too... I don't think you want to sell them a license of something, so I'm assuming you'll load some free app on there and let it scan... I can hardly imagine getting paid anything for that... (ok, you can, but nothing major)

2) Very easy stuff. Mostly anybody has friends, relatives or whatever that would do it for free anyways. If not, a quick post to a local newgroups will get you 3 dozen offers of people that will do it for next to nothing - or the neighbour's kids, a friend's friend or what not)

3) Most people that get into that (more than 1 PC) are usually not beginners, and they can manage the plug-and-go easy installs, running ICS or following the very easy steps to install a router, especially with all the easy documentation they come with nowadays and free tech support... Again, there's tons of ppl that would fix it for not much...

If you're aiming at corporate users, maybe you can expect some ok pay, but even then, I see some consultants sent by manufacturers to get warranty work done on their PCs and the pay REALLY sucks too (a few bucks per call).

Most local shops hire ppl to do those jobs at minimum wage and the market is flooded with them - even at that price.

My only advice - find something else to do with your time - it will pay more no matter what. People just don't want to pay that much. Even at that 20$ rate we see here, people don't even bring them in to get them fixed - they find cheaper solutions.

I've seen many people say things like this:

After studying in computer science you can either:

-go work where the jobs are getting offshorred to

-work for yourself as a consultant

-be on welfare (not work)

and in all 3 cases, you'll be making the exact same $

Sorry to say, but there really is no money to make here, NOWHERE near as much as what you posted...

[IcemanND]

I charge $60 hour, 1 hour minimum when onsite. Most of the time if it goes over 2 hours I drop it down to about $30 an hour there after. Most of the time if it is viruses/spyware I recommend they let me take it and do it at home, then I only charge an hour since I can do other things.

I get away with charging this prices since all my business comes via word of mouth and people are willing to pay for it when they know you've done a good job for someone they know.

[Zilevoli]

My father and myself do stuff like that for free ... well sometimes we get a good job let me take you out to dinner offers or something like that. As for corporate, hell I work at 9 an hour and do stuff like that which isnt even in my job descritipion.

Use common sense and be fair ... if the job is to easy give them a break. Then again this is my town ... lots of tech people around.

[gamehead200]

I'm a teenager and people still pay me... When they ask me how much I want, I just tell them "Whatever you find reasonable is fine with me"... I pretty much agree on what IcemanND said about how your services might be spread by word of mouth... That's a good thing... Even the computer consultant for my dad's company knows that I know just as much as him (more or less) about networking and such... That's a good thing!

[Synapse]

I was thinking about doing this myself, however i hate doing things on site. i was going to charge about 25 bucks an hour and they drop the computer off at my house, i repair it and log time started and time finished and call them up when its fixed to have them pick it up. however...things like networking is an onsite job.

i think most people will go by that price. I had one lady pay me 60 bucks because she couldn't find out how to unmute her computer.. lol. She offered 80 but i wouldnt' accept it. she was a friend of mines mom... so i would've done it for free. I told her i did it for free.. she said alright. she then gave the 60 bucks to my friend and had him slip it in my wallet when i wasn't looking lol.

[ceez]

well thank you for the positive and negative side of the computer biz world....i guess all this studying is really not paying off unless I live in India and work for AOL tech support!

I understand that there are people that are willing to do the same job for 20 bucks, but most of those people are the kids who really dont know what they're doing (I think), and probably will not get called back if there's a problem. I assume that the end user is not really the place to make money, but rather the small business owners/users. These are the people which you can slip in a service contract for a year and make some money of them.

Thanks for the input everyone!

ceez

ps- if people can take their pc to bestbuy and compusa and pay their ridiculous rates, then why cant they take their pc to me and pay my semi-rediculous rates?

[rupert86]

Oh wow,

$80!! That means $$$ large amout of money $$$ for us. Here in Pakistan labour is very inexpensive.

We do a complete install of:

Win98

All device drivers

OffXP

MSIE 6

MSN msngr

Yahoo msngr

mIRC

McAfee or Norton whatever they want.

ACDsee

Some sort of download manager

WMP 9

RealPlayer basic

WinZip

and if the person has a faster system like Pentium II then WinXP also and all the above listed software on this side too. (That's a standard list of software, it may grow longer or shorter).

This all sometimes takes abt 20 hrs on a really slow machine like having a meager Celeron 450MHz + 196MB RAM.

The charges: Rs. 350. ( US$1= RS. 58). That means abt $6-7. Oh gosh, if we went on charging in the likes of $50-90 (Rs. 3000-5000), only the installation cost would get them many PCs of the same config.

I think I'll come to US to open a repair & maintenance shop. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[CoffeeFiend]

Oh, some people say they make huge money like that, but like I posted, a job like you mention here cost 20$ AT MOST (for in shop, certified ppl and everything...). And even at that price people don't wanna take their PCs there... I got a hard time seeing people wanting to pay that much, especially on small jobs. Most big PC makers sending people to do warranty work on PCs don't pay anywhere near as much as some of the prices mentionned... Even businesses don't pay that much, so the average consumer...

I'm not gonna call anyone a liar, but like they say, you gotta take it all with a grain of salt.

@ceez, at 20$, there's tons of ppl willing to do it - who actually know the stuff. Here, drop your PC at some shop, tell them to install whatever, update everything, defrag it, and add some hardware... doesn't matter, even them will do it for that much (20$).

It's not worth getting into it at all. In fact, I refuse a lot of it. I only do it for friends, and for them I do it for free as a favor (that they usually return).

@rupert86 well, that's why IT/programming jobs in north america are getting outsourced too...

[Schadenfroh]

i charge flat fee of $15 an hour for anything computer related. plus cost of parts, that they must purchase themselves. Housecalls are free (ala still $15 an hour) but i would charge 10 cents for each mile it is from my house

[ceez]

@crahak have you even tried starting a small biz in this field? it seems like you've somehow failed. On your first post you stated that people can look up problems on the web, the few customers that I have only know how to check their email and click on links from their msn home page, good luck if they are smart enough to search for something when they get an error in their system. Most panic and decide to call someone instead of them trying to screw up their system even more, and others wouldnt understand the terminology if they tried to search.

I did work for a small biz in which people brought in pc's and he would charge $50 bucks in house per hour and his small office people would get charged $65 per hour (if not on a contract). The people in this small offices would call the dumbest stuff, from a simple net cable disconnected to a printer with a jammed paper, guess what? they got billed and they paid. Small biz people just want their systems to work so they can continue doing what they know what to do....sell insurance, realty, etc... they are not going to waste their man hours trying to figure out a problem....that's when "WE" come in.

I think you're a bit too negative on this issue. Dont be too hard on yourself.

[Ge0ph]

Here in southern Idaho I have been doing this for around 12 years. I get $35 an hour for in shop work and $55 an hour for on site work. I will not do work for end users and do only small business's.

I get a stedy amout of work but not enough to make a living. To keep it together I also own a vending/amusment device route and play music on the weekends.

Last summer I was offered an IT job that would pay me $24 and hour, 40 hours a week , 52 weeks a year and no mention of not doing the work I was currently doing. I took the job 'cause that's about as good as it gets.

[ceez]

Last summer I was offered an IT job that would pay me $24 and hour, 40 hours a week , 52 weeks a year and no mention of not doing the work I was currently doing. I took the job 'cause that's about as good as it gets.

that's what I wish i could get?!?!?!

[mazin]

People, who started their IT job 12+ years ago, made alot of money. The labor market condition, that time, was in favor of IT professionals--numerous jobs/few profs.

Now, conditions have been changed.

IT, public and private, schools are everywhere. Customized PCs have been wide-spread.

No more shortage in profs. So, the equilibrium price of doing a job is now down.

Forces of demand/supply are not limited to IT field. It's the nature of any other market, too.

A wise IT specialist should have additional talents to do other jobs, besides.

[CoffeeFiend]

I actually co-owned a shop, but that was before the big pentium and internet boom (roughly 15 years ago). I moved on to something else as the demand was next to non existing where I lived. It eventually got better, but nowadays, the market is flooded with overqualified people, as jobs are getting outsourced and that the market isn't as profitable as it was not long ago. Shops do those anything jobs for 20$ here, and lots of people will do it for that much too... If you get one of those 24$/h jobs, then you're doing pretty good already. I've seen dozens of ppl in this field who can't find work. You will always find a select few willing to pay several times the market price for anything, but you can't base a business counting on them. I've had work orders for out of paper printers and such too, but it's far from always being always like that. I'm not a pessimist, I'm just saying don't count on an endless supply of people with more money than brains to make a living. Overall, it doesn't quite pay that much...