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Geek squad / Best buy Busted!

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nudone:
good point. many people i've fixed things for aren't on a great income, others a typical income and one or two a mind boggling income. regardless of their income the response and satisfaction has always been the same, the only difference being that the response is usually more appreciated when money changes hand.

doing a 'favour' for someone hasn't really ever invoked a response of "you are my hero and i shall forever be in your debt." instead the response to the free service is often "thanks" and a tacit belief from them that you are obliged to help (like you, f0dder, said above). making someone pay for something appears to make them think a little more about what has been done - like they now understand the value of the service. okay, i'm talking obvious business practise - i just need to remind myself what it's all about.

back to the question of their income. i've never had a fixed rate so i've just charged what seemed correct at the time - or let them make an offer and i'll take less if they've been over generous. the problem of charging an hourly rate, and you'll know this already, is that some pc problems take quite a while to figure out - charging an hourly rate wouldn't be realistic. maybe having a cap on the total to charge is a compromise, but then that of course means you could have spent one or two days on something and the payment your receive isn't going to match the time you've spent. i see the solution to that is to multitask repair jobs just as a shop would do.

i guess you set a fixed rate, reduce it by 10, 20 or 50 percent for friends/family. if something is so simple it would be an insult to charge for it then don't charge - that's just good promotion for yourself - you've shown yourself to be a fair business person and hopefully that will spread through word of mouth.

as usual, i've thought about all these things, but the action is still in the land of dreams.

tomos:
that some pc problems take quite a while to figure out - charging an hourly rate wouldn't be realistic. maybe having a cap on the total to charge is a compromise, but then that of course means you could have spent one or two days on something and the payment your receive isn't going to match the time you've spent. i see the solution to that is to multitask repair jobs just as a shop would do.-nudone
--- End quote ---
which probably means often next to impossible to estimate the cost in advance.

I've had the experience of
1) a profi not charging cause he wasn't able to fix my laptop.
2) a profi charging for his time in spite of not able to fix the my laptop.

case 1)   I reckon he learned not to mess around with laptops he didnt know (or maybe laptops in general  :) )
case 2)   I learned that if someone is unsure whether they can fix it (same laptop), maybe you're better off sending it to an official service centre - then again might have been still the same result ..

Most people fixing computers around here seem to build & sell them as well - I guess the two complement each other.
(Then you can always say - it's not worth fixing, but I can sell you a ...)

nudone:
tomos, that's another good point which i had forgotten today for some reason... what to do when you can't fix it. i can only remember one occasion where i was completely lost for ideas what to do with a machine so i returned it to it's owner and explained the situation. i didn't charge but i think they might have given me a tip as they appreciated the amount of time i spent trying to help - but, of course, this can't be expected unless you've set out some rules to the customer first.

this is probably the worst and trickiest area when dealing with pc trouble shooting. there are going to be times when something can't be fixed for a reasonable cost, i.e. a new component is required and the customer can't or won't agree to it. you can't force the customer to upgrade or replace the part and they might be unwilling to pay for the time it took you to check out their machine.

this is probably one of the reasons why i've always held back from doing this as a real business. friends and friends of friends aren't likely to refuse to pay but unknown customers don't have any loyalty to you. i think i might be blowing this thought out of all proportion though, as things can't be that bad in the real world.

the point of selling as well as fixing is a good idea but it requires more commitment than i wish to put into this kind of business. that is, unless the selling could be kept to a minimum.

nite_monkey:
now does half of these replies evan relate to the topic?
Yeah I always thought they weren't really such a good idea. Take your computer problems to a real pro.

nudone:
a real pro being what exactly?

edit:
i perhaps better just say that i didn't intend to hijack this thread. but as the first reply was by Gothi[c], the author of this thread, and the topic didn't move back to the 'geek squad' then it seemed okay to carry on.

i'll refrain from carrying on with my nonsense and maybe someone will post something referring to the original youtube link.

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