Someone approached me with a laptop that they needed repaired; Normally I don't venture into personal computer service, but I was sort of cornered into it this time. Since I'm not used to doing this, I'm not sure how much I should ask for as payment.
Here's what I did:
-Repaired physical damage (laptop display and base were separated at a hinge)
-Cleaned up the normal grossness on the laptop screen, keyboard, etc.
-Dusted out the internals
-Disk Defrag
-Registry cleanup
-Security updates
-Installed avast!
-Cleaned up a bunch of adware and crap programs that constantly ran in the background
$50, buy yourself a nice dinner or whatever
Also just for comparison, Geek Squad would charge ~$200 just to run a diagnostic..
50$, tell them it is so cheap because of a christmas sale. Otherwise, that sounds like awfully a lot of work. i'd say 100$, but it is christmas.
You usually have to consider who is the client, what are the specs of the laptop etc. If it is a piece of craptop, then mostly like 50$, but if it is a nice one like a $500+ quality brand, i'd ask more.
It's skilled labor. So think of it like $15 bucks per hour or more if you're starting out. Then think about how long it will take, labour wise, to complete the task.
It really depends on the type of customer as to how you should charge them. For your average residential customer that isn't really familiar with computer tech, it's usually better to charge a flat service rate + parts. When you get into hourly rates with residential customers things tend to get dicey.
If whatever you're working on has obvious signs of abuse, you should thoroughly document the abuse and repairs you performed (pictures, purchase orders, etc.) for liability reasons. This is so the customer can't try and pull a fast one on you and claim you damaged the computer and they shouldn't have to pay, etc.
Whenever I work on some residential customers machine, I charge a flat rate based on how irritating the machine is to work on. If it's an easy fix, I usually don't charge anything. If it's minor maintenance (internal dusting, application updates, virus scans, other general cleanup) I generally charge between $40-60. If anything major is wrong like heavy abuse (improper installation of parts, liquid spillage, parts/case damage) then it's $100 on up.
$100 is about standard. Get a name behind yourself and you can up that to $200
[editline]27th December 2012[/editline]
By Aussie standards.
Thanks for the suggestions guys. Settled on $35 for physical and $25 for software. $60 total.
Wouldn't hurt to type up a quick list of prices for future reference. I do $100+gas to take it to my place for a reformat, $50 for on-site virus scan/general cleanup, and a minimum of $30 for a super easy house-call where the cable's not plugged in or something ridiculous like that.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
