How much for PC Repair.

Lil306

Generally work like this is only good as a hobby, the best way to get into doing it as a full time job is become established with a client base (someone like falcon computers), or getting in with the big companies like pc world (thetechguys) - who apparently are doing a recruitment drive..

You can't really put your prices up really high and consider it the "going rate" because those prices are charged like that as people are rip off merchants and others are simply in the same situation as you and hoping someone will pay high

Generally those companies go down quick, seriously if you want to get business in just do it as a hobby at first but put the word around. Getting a customer referal is great for business, they get the personal feeling, you get the job and a satisfied customer who will come back and put word around for you to help out.

We once had a local IT "expert" open shop nearby in my village, he charged someone about £100 to install a CD drive, things like this boil my pee-pee. It's why the industry has a bad name. I looked at a PC and diagnosed it had a faulty PSU in around 2 mins, I gave the person a rough price to fix it for a new PSU and went and bought one, fixed it and she had no further problems. She's now a repeat customer who I've made a lot more tech-savvy through the advice I gave her when helping out each time. So I get less problems but more referalls.

The problem with most PCs problems I think you get people in 1 of 2 categories

Those who know nothing about IT and click on everything
Generally easiest ones to fix, but most time consuming because they have so much crap

Those who consider themselves "experts" and try to lecture you on everything you do as it being wrong or they could do better
These are a pain in the !!!!, first if you know better why don't you fix it... second, shut up I know more. Pleb

I really hate customer number 2, because they're difficult to work with, that's why I prefer taking things away. You will get things done quicker without interference and thus be able to charge a lower price for less wasted time and less hassle getting the money. Secondly, it's peace and quiet

dragon934

Lil306 wrote: »

The problem with most PCs problems I think you get people in 1 of 2 categories

Those who know nothing about IT and click on everything
Generally easiest ones to fix, but most time consuming because they have so much crap

Those who consider themselves "experts" and try to lecture you on everything you do as it being wrong or they could do better
These are a pain in the !!!!, first if you know better why don't you fix it... second, shut up I know more. Pleb

I really hate customer number 2, because they're difficult to work with, that's why I prefer taking things away. You will get things done quicker without interference and thus be able to charge a lower price for less wasted time and less hassle getting the money. Secondly, it's peace and quiet

I agree, and have experienced both and I must say I do value my quiet time when meeting a PC with an attitude for the first time

I hate the rip-off merchants too. That's why I started this thread, I really don't want to charge too much, and I never have. I think the referrals are the way forward, I had a few already and everyone's been happy. Of course I've been doing it cheap for now as its not been a serious job. Which means one lucky guy is getting his notebook back for £20 (inc parts) that didn't switch on because of some burnt out cmos components wouldn't let it charge or run off mains.
Out of interest how much would anyone charge for motherboard repair? I appreciate they aren't always fixable or indeed worth fixing on occasions, but in my above case my customer was lucky that a £5 parts could be bought and soldered in, instead of a £110 M/B

Lil306

dragon934 wrote: »

I agree, and have experienced both and I must say I do value my quiet time when meeting a PC with an attitude for the first time

I hate the rip-off merchants too. That's why I started this thread, I really don't want to charge too much, and I never have. I think the referrals are the way forward, I had a few already and everyone's been happy. Of course I've been doing it cheap for now as its not been a serious job. Which means one lucky guy is getting his notebook back for £20 (inc parts) that didn't switch on because of some burnt out cmos components wouldn't let it charge or run off mains.
Out of interest how much would anyone charge for motherboard repair? I appreciate they aren't always fixable or indeed worth fixing on occasions, but in my above case my customer was lucky that a £5 parts could be bought and soldered in, instead of a £110 M/B

It varies depending on complexity really, and your skills with the soldiering iron

One of the more common laptop motherboard faults is the dc pin broken off when it's dropped so it either doesn't charge or gets no power. Places like PC world charge for a new motherboard, whereas some independant 3rd party repair companies charge around £100 to solder the DC Jacket

It varies a lot since that single job isn't going to cover your wages, plus what happens if you stuff up you need to buy a new board. You have to remember the prices of PC's are getting cheaper and sometimes it's easier to replace than fix......

If it was something like soldering a DC Jack I would probably charge ~£80, because it's not that hard a job in terms of what the problem is, but the complexity of the task. In all honesty though you need to do some market research etc and find the appropriate rates.

Richie-from-the-Boro

I stopped doing house calls about 15 years ago, unless it's office networks or home theatre related, you want it fixed ? - bring it to me.

I have a ' legacy ' group of a diminishing ' 50 or so that keep coming back, a couple of dozen or so with bespoke machines that I built 5 or so years ago. Yes unbelievable, but apart from extra memory those machines were too well built from good components and and were / still are good enough for the end user's requirements. The point here is that original group and its multiplier effect along with a couple of freebies provide most of the current income.

I also do 4 freebies on a when I can find the time basis for stand alone local charities [ real local - not local branches of biggies ] and have done for a decade, these too provide very good referrals.

I have never advertised for business in my life. I do try to educate, and explain to people when they come to collect what happens and how to avoid it happening again. As Andy [ Lil306 ] says it's more often than not a waste of my time but I do continue to try to change peoples computing behaviour to their benefit.

Customers seem to clearly fall into two groups, those who are repeat habitual offenders and those who are not. I have at any one time about 60 iso's archived on caddys for the repeaters, I used to make a DVD and hide it in the bottom of their case so that :

- when / if it went wrong I could talk them through a telephone [ Janet & John level ] DOS repair
- but they either managed to loose even that disk or could not grasp the DOS process, so I gave that up !

It's a hard game you are trying to get into dragon934. When I started it was witchcraft and mysticism and to a large extent luck, poor MOBO's crappy driver sets, useless hardware, multitudes of different chipsets etc. Much of the understanding then was northbridge / southbridge overheating, soldering in new caps, modern polymer caps and voltage smoothing have all but done away with these issues. Today modern O/S and mature chipset / driver combinations have moved work [ income ] from hardware to software and as Andy states clearing up other peoples crap

My advice on your original question is it will take at least five years to get rid of your competition and earn a decent living.

- cost your own break even point, add in 20% and work at that for the first year, get known & get rid of competitors
- cost your own break even point, add in 50% for the repeat offender group with a [*] 1 /2 / 3 month warranty on your work
- invest in freebies [ cost benefit analysis ] they can be a fraction of advertising costs

* 3 month warranty on your work :

- USB / Sirens get their music photo's docs etc off
- USB / Sirens reinstate the iso
- USB / Sirens reinstate their music photo's docs etc
- 20 automated minutes is cheap for the word of mouth reccommendations return

N.B. your are ex regs !, eventually seek out small network maintenance / upgrade business, best of luck M8

dragon934

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

I stopped doing house calls about 15 years ago, unless it's office networks or home theatre related, you want it fixed ? - bring it to me.

I have a ' legacy ' group of a diminishing ' 50 or so that keep coming back, a couple of dozen or so with bespoke machines that I built 5 or so years ago. Yes unbelievable, but apart from extra memory those machines were too well built from good components and and were / still are good enough for the end user's requirements. The point here is that original group and its multiplier effect along with a couple of freebies provide most of the current income.

I also do 4 freebies on a when I can find the time basis for stand alone local charities [ real local - not local branches of biggies ] and have done for a decade, these too provide very good referrals.

I have never advertised for business in my life. I do try to educate, and explain to people when they come to collect what happens and how to avoid it happening again. As Andy [ Lil306 ] says it's more often than not a waste of my time but I do continue to try to change peoples computing behaviour to their benefit.

Customers seem to clearly fall into two groups, those who are repeat habitual offenders and those who are not. I have at any one time about 60 iso's archived on caddys for the repeaters, I used to make a DVD and hide it in the bottom of their case so that :

- when / if it went wrong I could talk them through a telephone [ Janet & John level ] DOS repair
- but they either managed to loose even that disk or could not grasp the DOS process, so I gave that up !

It's a hard game you are trying to get into dragon934. When I started it was witchcraft and mysticism and to a large extent luck, poor MOBO's crappy driver sets, useless hardware, multitudes of different chipsets etc. Much of the understanding then was northbridge / southbridge overheating, soldering in new caps, modern polymer caps and voltage smoothing have all but done away with these issues. Today modern O/S and mature chipset / driver combinations have moved work [ income ] from hardware to software and as Andy states clearing up other peoples crap

My advice on your original question is it will take at least five years to get rid of your competition and earn a decent living.

- cost your own break even point, add in 20% and work at that for the first year, get known & get rid of competitors
- cost your own break even point, add in 50% for the repeat offender group with a
[*] 1 /2 / 3 month warranty on your work
- invest in freebies [ cost benefit analysis ] they can be a fraction of advertising costs

* 3 month warranty on your work :

- USB / Sirens get their music photo's docs etc off
- USB / Sirens reinstate the iso
- USB / Sirens reinstate their music photo's docs etc
- 20 automated minutes is cheap for the word of mouth reccommendations return

N.B. your are ex regs !, eventually seek out small network maintenance / upgrade business, best of luck M8

Thanks i think i've got a good idea on what lies ahead now. Just need to put it into practice. Cheers

Lil306

Absolutely rock solid and to the point advice from Richie there, as mentioned. You should only really consider doing PC repairs if it's a business you can make money in 9/10 it should really just be done as a hobby, if your lucky enough to find an area where they have LOTS of repairs needed or you're really good at advertising yourself then go fo it. Personally I don't see that as an option because users are getting more intelligent with PC's and eventually you only need them when something goes bang

It's always a nice hobby to do, but most of the time it's freebies as Rich says. When you're in the trade most people come to you for some form of advice one time or another.

I'm going into website hosting / vps hosting etc myself, since the .com industry is more interesting and profitable (once I find the niche I want to focus on)

theatretony

This thread is exactly what I was thinking of doing, but decided against as there is no way to make a decent living and make the same as what I am now working in IT...

At present I have an end user with at least 4 trojans on their lappy, and I cannot decide how much to charge them....

If it was work related (full time job) we would have charged then £950 for the day !!!!!!!!!

weegie.geek

Lil306 wrote: »

Absolutely rock solid and to the point advice from Richie there, as mentioned. You should only really consider doing PC repairs if it's a business you can make money in 9/10 it should really just be done as a hobby, if your lucky enough to find an area where they have LOTS of repairs needed or you're really good at advertising yourself then go fo it. Personally I don't see that as an option because users are getting more intelligent with PC's and eventually you only need them when something goes bang

It's always a nice hobby to do, but most of the time it's freebies as Rich says. When you're in the trade most people come to you for some form of advice one time or another.

I'm going into website hosting / vps hosting etc myself, since the .com industry is more interesting and profitable (once I find the niche I want to focus on)

Hosting has even smaller margins, unless you're looking at doing managed hosting. The budget end of the hosting market is pretty saturated, especially VPS stuff. Take a look at WHT, Digitapoint, LowEndBox etc. 5 quid a month for 512MB/20GB/1TB is insane.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Lil306 wrote: »

Absolutely rock solid and to the point advice from Richie there, as mentioned. You should only really consider doing PC repairs if it's a business you can make money in 9/10 it should really just be done as a hobby, if your lucky enough to find an area where they have LOTS of repairs needed or you're really good at advertising yourself then go fo it. Personally I don't see that as an option because users are getting more intelligent with PC's and eventually you only need them when something goes bang

It's always a nice hobby to do, but most of the time it's freebies as Rich says. When you're in the trade most people come to you for some form of advice one time or another.

I'm going into website hosting / vps hosting etc myself, since the .com industry is more interesting and profitable (once I find the niche I want to focus on)

I've a mate I used to work with many years ago near you in the Pool. He was retired from the Fire Brigade 20 years ago, stax of pension coin and bored, his body was broke but his brain was athletic enough to want to work.

Wheelchair and real employment was the barrier. Plenty of govvie schemes but all ' social engineering ' or ' social accounting ' type basis. I told him to do frebies for a cost only basis for 6 then 12 months and evaluate whether the activity benefit would / should be worth him continuing .. .. .. I told him to establish a ' Fire Brigade ' consumer base immediately.

The Pool is small compared to the Boro, I shoved a lot of de-crapping jobs his way because we hate it, he is diligent and patient and quickly built up a following :

- at the six month point I was going over several times a month to help get rid of the backlog of work
- he decided a ' wendy house ' in his back garden would cost £10k if we all contributed labour / skills FOC .. .. and we did
- £gifts for his freebies paid 25% of the ' wendy workshop ' he is now the proud owner of a wheelchair friendly brick built in his own garden

In the last 5 / 6 years, ' bare bones ' , ' ready mades ' , stable O/S and the power of transparency of pricing on the internet means that hardware build / repairs are few and far between for one man band operations. In the same way that a new printer with cartridges used to be cheaper than buying refills the market changes. In those 5 years his work has reduced to an average of 5 or 6 a day. It's kept him active, provides an income, built him and now more than fully paid for his £25k retail workshop and he is happy.

Individuals with limited skills who used to be looked down on by the techie industry could now be empowered. What the punter wants is:

- de crappyfiing, and de fluffing
- while they wait [ call back when I pick the kids up / after work / shopping etc ]
- at a low price, £15 per hour minimum 1 hour + costs = £500pw in pocket income / no costs
- 1/2 a dozen automated auto boot dongles do the work for you
- not a good enough income as a sole source of income for someone starting out
- but if you can make a customer base for weekends and one evening only in addition to your full time job .. .. .. who knows ? .. .. in a year or so ?

AzimScot

I have been doing this on the side and find it a quick way to make some extra cash and I am always looking at ways I can speed up the recovery. 1 way if the customer agrees I can connect to there computer remotly from my home laptop and fix there computer even when there not home or inconvienent time as long as there computer is left switched on, which I think many of us including me do anyway all day.

Anyone had their pc/laptop or printers etc fixed by PC world? I heard some horror stories with them that they charge per problem and sometimes take 4 weeks etc.