What is the going rate to charge for computer services?

JohnCorite

Hi there,

Could someone tell me what the going rates are to have a computer engineer fix a computer?...with a virus for example? I have been told its £25/£30 per hour up to £50 per hour, but as a customer I would never pay that, especially if a virus removal takes three hours....I could buy a new computer (netbook) for fifty pounds more!!

So is £25 per hour, or £75 for a three hour virus removal, reality or are these computer engineers out of touch? especially with todays climate. Also what is too cheap? For example, would £10 per hour or £15 per hour be too cheap or just affordable?

Regards

John

scheming_gypsy

are you talking about one of the people who stick an advert in the paper offering to do x, y and z and call themselves a 'mobile computer engineer'? It's unlikely you'll see many real IT bods getting up to £50 an hour in a proper job, somebody who 'knows a bit about computers' and has a memory stick with a few programmes on it has no chance of getting it.
If you're looking to get into it you're better to just give a low price consultation and call out fee and a reasonable price relating to what needs doing instead of an hourly fee.

vax2002

They are 10 a penny, bloke with box of bits and linux on a memory stick..

paddyrg

How about taking it to a fixit place and asking for a deal on removing viruses/giving it a good sort-out? Then you are not paying by the hour for someone on site, and they can agree a fixed fee. Most of the time for doing these things is watching progress bars, so someone in your home has to charge by the hour, a fixit place can get on with other jobs at the same time.

JohnCorite

Thanks for the replies.

Questions:

Why is a hourly rate bad? If it was £20 per hour, at two hours work (so £40) versus a standard rate of £40; surely you would prefer the hourly rate if it turned out that the virus could be removed in one hour afterall. You would then only pay £20, whereas with the standard rate you are obliged to pay the £40 even though the work has turned out to be one hour.

Going back to my original query. I just think to pay £50 an hour, regardless if you are IT Professional or just a man (or woman) with a usb tools memory stick, either way the virus would be killed (if they are both using the standard virus removal tools). In other words, do people still classify this business as a Professional service that can command £50 per hour or do many people think it is a business whereby "man with usb stick" will do the same job for £20 per hour for example?

I am trying to guage what is of value in this business and more importantly if professional man with microsoft certificates for example can still command his prices? And also what is too cheap and affordable? So what rates would you pay and not pay for a three hour virus removal for example?

Regards

Job

JohnCorite

Excuse the JOB regards!!! Can't even spell my own names these days!

scheming_gypsy

All answers are in my personal opinion as a 19 year IT engineer.

JohnCorite wrote: »

Thanks for the replies.

Questions:

Why is a hourly rate bad? If it was £20 per hour, at two hours work (so £40) versus a standard rate of £40; surely you would prefer the hourly rate if it turned out that the virus could be removed in one hour afterall. You would then only pay £20, whereas with the standard rate you are obliged to pay the £40 even though the work has turned out to be one hour.

It's bad simply because it also works the other way round as well. At £20 an hour on a PC with a couple of hard drives etc then it'll take longer. You run the virus checker, then run everything else and run the virus checker again to make sure everything is gone.
for every honest person there's somebody who'll stretch it out.

you also have to be competitive with other people doing it, fair and compete with shops.
Plus, these days a lot of people know somebody who knows a bit about computers or a techy.

Going back to my original query. I just think to pay £50 an hour, regardless if you are IT Professional or just a man (or woman) with a usb tools memory stick, either way the virus would be killed (if they are both using the standard virus removal tools). In other words, do people still classify this business as a Professional service that can command £50 per hour or do many people think it is a business whereby "man with usb stick" will do the same job for £20 per hour for example?

If you're phoning somebody from the paper who'll come round to your house and fix it, then it's not really a professional service. It's a convenient service as they'll come to you, so the question is how much do you want to pay for convenience?

I am trying to guage what is of value in this business and more importantly if professional man with microsoft certificates for example can still command his prices? And also what is too cheap and affordable?

Microsoft certificates don't mean anything any more. It just means you've passed a Microsoft exam and not that you actually have hands on experience (although i'm guessing you just mean somebody who does it for a living and not just in their spare time).
but no, it's no longer specialised enough to command those rates. there will still be people who pay them if they don't know any better but they're few and far between these days.

So what rates would you pay and not pay for a three hour virus removal for example?

Regards

Job

As it's my trade i obviously wouldn't pay anything but the order would be:

1 - do it myself
2 - see if i know somebody who can do it
3 - see if anybody i know, or if they know somebody who can do it
4 - shop around for the cheapest
5 - compare the prices to computer shop price and decide what i want to do.

paddyrg

My gosh do you know just how complicated a computer is inside? And how many levels/types of malware a computer can have? Including some that embeds itself beneath the operating system! And some of these hold the door open for others, it is a battlezone. 'Some Bloke' can certainly get rid of most stuff fairly efficiently, but experience counts for a LOT in this.

£50/hour wouldn't seem outrageous if a plumber quoted it for their specialist skills. You're lucky you don't have a Mac, I know the local Apple place charge £95 and hour (which is staggering) for a not terribly skilled technician doing housecalls.

Hammyman

JohnCorite wrote: »

Hi there,

Could someone tell me what the going rates are to have a computer engineer fix a computer?...with a virus for example? I have been told its £25/£30 per hour up to £50 per hour, but as a customer I would never pay that, especially if a virus removal takes three hours....I could buy a new computer (netbook) for fifty pounds more!!

So is £25 per hour, or £75 for a three hour virus removal, reality or are these computer engineers out of touch?

I charge, along with the two shops in my town £30 and I have enough customers to keep me happy.

In the next town, they're cutting each others throats and charging £10/hr and somehow managing to pay wages and shop running costs out of that.

One thing to think about is how competent are you? For example, I know my !!!! from my elbow so I can fix a lot of things in half the time of other people or in many cases, fix things they can't. So someone paying me £30/hr to do a job that takes me 30 minutes will save money over someone charging £15/hr who takes 2 hrs to do it.

Then there is how you charge. I don't charge for every minute I'm on a job. I have a rough approximation of how long something should take and thats what I charge even if it runs on an hour longer. The only thing I charge every minute out for is virus and malware removal.

Hammyman

JohnCorite wrote: »

I am trying to guage what is of value in this business and more importantly if professional man with microsoft certificates for example can still command his prices?

<snigger> MCSE </snigger>

Yeah, had a job in today that one of those professionals couldn't do. A laptop that would blue screen and corrupt HDD data. The so called professional said they could find nothing wrong with it and charged the customer £30 for the privilege, telling them it must be the fridge or microwave or other computers in the house that were "sending something down the mains".:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I fixed it in 10 minutes. 5 year old laptop so whip out the RAM, clean the contacts on the DIMM and the memory socket and pop it back in then run Scandisk to recover the corrupted data and give the heatsink a quick blast. The difference between someone with an electronics engineering background who knows about thermal creep and corrosion caused by different metals being in contact with each other compared to someone who took a multiple guess exam.

Hammyman

paddyrg wrote: »

My gosh do you know just how complicated a computer is inside?

Yes thanks. A 2 year old can put together a computer nowadays. You could train a monkey to do it. You can't get anything in the wrong slot and Plug'n'Play takes care of allocating all the resources. Building a computer is the equivalent of those toys babies have where you put the right shape block in the right hole.

The hardest part about building a computer nowadays is deciding what CPU and graphics card to go with.