PC Repair Business - Hints and tips

skint999

pgilc1 wrote: »

Local businesses will typically expect you to fix it when it happens and inside business hours. They wont necessarily appreciate having to open up again in an evening and paying someone to be there with you.

true but there would always be this time committment issue when operating a seperate proffit making service along side a full time job, its something that would have to be worked on, thats where a good client relationship would come in, advising the customer of the current situation and flexibility at current job would be helpful.

if you could guarantee a 24 hour response service, this would give you chance to finish your shift and start on the side job, this way you havent broken any commitment, and you are doing exactly what you said you could do which is what the customer signed up for in the first place.

im not stating that you should solely work on small local business, but in my opinion to take this further and expand your company and look at doing this full time in the future, this would be the way to go to maintain systems for small/local business.

motorguy

skint999 wrote: »

true but there would always be this time committment issue when operating a seperate proffit making service along side a full time job, its something that would have to be worked on, thats where a good client relationship would come in, advising the customer of the current situation and flexibility at current job would be helpful.

if you could guarantee a 24 hour response service, this would give you chance to finish your shift and start on the side job, this way you havent broken any commitment, and you are doing exactly what you said you could do which is what the customer signed up for in the first place.

im not stating that you should solely work on small local business, but in my opinion to take this further and expand your company and look at doing this full time in the future, this would be the way to go to maintain systems for small/local business.

I'd just be careful of the wording - 24hr response service - sounds a lot like 'we're available 24hrs a day'.

A lot of businesses expect a 4hr response, ie, you're looking at the fault within 4 hrs. If you got a call at 09:00 'our network is down' then it might be 9 hrs before you can have a look at it. That might not be too acceptable to a lot of businesses.

That brings me to another point - small business support could mean network support too - which is another skillset all together. They'll want you to support everything computer related not just the pcs.

Its doable - i did it - but it brings with it a lot of pressure too.

kbh4031

Hi James, What area are you in?? there may be some MSErs that need repairs....I Do

richt71

I'd join your local chamber of commerce - most towns have them. That way you can network with local businesses. You can also book to give a quick talk on the subject of wha can go wrong with computers and it can usually be fixed. If it's interesting you'll get a load of questions after you have given your talk - ake a load of business cards. Might be worth asking local businesses to display your ad in their window or near he till. Of course you could offer them a fee for any successful referal they make to you.

fc123

I just got a flyer through the door offering PC help etc.
It isn't very inspiring (blk writing on white paper) or glossy but it is on my pinboard as his rates were £20 1st hour and £5 for every half hour thereafter.

Problem is....from a customer point of view, I would have zero idea of how long a job would be.......and then it's stressful as the bloke is pottering away at your PC and I would be eyeing the clock adding up the fee.

At the bottom of this flyer he/she wrote Registered ITSquad member of pchomehelp.org ????


BTW, OH is carpenter and customers want custom built door built from scratch to fit unusual sized opening....and then wonder why it doesn't cost £29.99 'like what B+ Q charge'.

I sell clothing and had the 'great' idea of offering a length shortening service (as some people won't buy an item if it is 2" too long and they have no sewing skills themselves) but worked out I would need to charge £6.
@ £30 for a skirt, people though this was very expensive and I should do it for free........so it's not just in PC land.

Problem is the items are manufactured in low labour cost countries and folks can't get their heads around UK labour rates (what they are paid to do a job)...........no solution to that one...sorry

motorguy

Theres no way that bloke will survive charging £20 first hour then a fiver per hour thereafter.

Actually people like that devalue the skill of it. It only takes one muppet to be doing that and all of a sudden people start to think they can get a professional service for £5 an hour - which isnt sustainable for any length of time.

BDi_Chopper

pgilc1 wrote: »

Theres no way that bloke will survive charging £20 first hour then a fiver per hour thereafter.

Actually people like that devalue the skill of it. It only takes one muppet to be doing that and all of a sudden people start to think they can get a professional service for £5 an hour - which isnt sustainable for any length of time.

Absolutely correct on this!
I run a couple of IT Companies that deal in network support for businesses and am always mopping up after muppets that think they know about IT because they've re-installed windows a couple of times...

My advice on this thread is "People buy from people." You would be amazed what customers will pay for a spot on professional service.

When you think about it, it's like taking your car to a BMW garage rather than the local one. Firstly, they know everything about the car,secondly - it's neat and tidy, thirdly there's free coffee and fourthly, people like to spend a lot of money on a top service.

BDi.

richt71

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

All the comments about !!!!!! lead me to ask, make sure you know what your responsibility / liability is if you find something illegal on someone's machine! And I'm not talking a dodgy copy of Windows here ...

I would imagine that recent high profile prosecutions might make some users reluctant to take their computer to PC World, and you might be just the person they pick to sort out their problems.

This reminds me of an aweful situation at a place I worked at as IT support. We tried to help this guy with his laptop but couldn't fix it so we asked him to drop it into our repair department. They logged onto his laptop and found a hard drive full of pics of the child variety if you know what I mean. It was passed to the police who hopefully did more han had a word. :mad:

richt71

BDi_Chopper wrote: »

Absolutely correct on this!
I run a couple of IT Companies that deal in network support for businesses and am always mopping up after muppets that think they know about IT because they've re-installed windows a couple of times...

My advice on this thread is "People buy from people." You would be amazed what customers will pay for a spot on professional service.

When you think about it, it's like taking your car to a BMW garage rather than the local one. Firstly, they know everything about the car,secondly - it's neat and tidy, thirdly there's free coffee and fourthly, people like to spend a lot of money on a top service.

BDi.

I run a couple of service businesses aimed at local businesses and I agree they will pay good money IF you can show results. Obviously there's always the odd business that want everyhing cheap.

MikeFishcake

Hello...

Long time MSE lurker here

After 10 years, I have recently finished a job working in a computer repair department for a large public sector organisation, where we mostly fixed peoples personally owned equipment, and if I had the opportunity to do it privately, would I?

NO.

Not a chance.

It's far too much trouble. Although I'm a geek at heart and I enjoy tinkering around with computer equipment, after a decade's experience of dealing with people with computer issues, there is no way on God's green Earth that I would consider doing it again.

Like a few people have mentioned above, people don't want to pay £60-£70+ for a service when you can get a brand new computer for a few hundred pounds, and people don't see the difference between you fixing a power supply unit exploding, and weeks later, their kids downloading "free" programs that litter their PC up with nonsense.

I won't lie, you do get a lot of people that are happy to pay a fair price and do take care of their equipment, and the feeling you get from fixing a problem and cheering someone up is wonderful, but the hassle you get from people (whether justified or not) isn't worth the stress.

If you have lots of spare time and fancy a bit of pocket money, why not give it a try. But don't expect to make a living off it.

The only way I could see anyone earning a living from private computer repairs (without ripping people off) is if they already have a workshop where they can have several things on the go at once. Most computer fixes are software related and generally involve sitting watching progress bars, so if you have 5 on the bench at once, youcan click a button, then tackle the next PC in the row, but that requires a lot of pre-investment and you'd need a massive throughput of work to gain a profit.

As far as virus removal services go? Nuh-huh. There's not a single anti virus / anti spyware package out there that can remove all of the nasties out there and most of the time after throwing several removal / cleanup programs at a system for hours at a time, the computer is still dragging its feet and a format and re-installation is what's needed. I've worked with some incredibly skilled and experienced people, and there have been many, many times where they've just sat at a PC, looked at it and thought "I just can't be bothered".

And for the love of all that is good and true, whatever you do, DON'T provide a service building new PCs for people. With rapidly shrinking margins and price wars with the big manufacturers, it's just not worth it any more. Apart from the fact that you won't be able to beat the likes of the Dell weekend offers (or HP, Acer etc), any calls you get from people will immediately piddle all over what tiny markup you made on the systems anyway.

If you do choose to ignore this advice, pay attention to pgilc1.