Anyone here do PC repairs on the side? How much do you charge?

[Wolfsraider]

I still only charge 10.00 an hour in most cases. I build computers, reinstall operating systems. remove viruses, I install software and hook them up to internet etc. I even install updated software ("fruityloops etc for musicians) at the same prices. Its relaxing to me. I do not offer a warranty but will fix whatever went wrong at the same fee.

geek squad charges 40.00 here for virus removal. I only do it in my spare time so I usually have the customers computer 3 days or so. (if its an os install drivers etc)

 

[Arkitech]

interesting responses


upping for more replies

 

[TwiceOver]

$20/hr if you bring it to me, $30/hr if I have to go to your home.

For friends I used to work for beer and lunch. Family... I'll do it if I have to, but I usually try to avoid them.

 

[meltdown75]

very seldomly but yes i still fix PC stuff for friends or family. XP / software issues, new hardware installs, etc.

i don't charge. usually i get something in return anyway, 20 or 40 bucks, some beer, a round of golf, etc.

i have a few "regular" customers that i will make housecalls to.. maybe once or twice per year... one is an old lady who lives by my aunt. i never charge her, she just gets so stressed about the smallest things... she cares for her husband who has Alzheimer's, he is the cutest little old man last time i was there, he came to the door of the room the computer was in, and said, "just hit it with a hammer" he also gets really excited when he gets to eat subs for dinner ... very cute

i never charge her because eliminating some stress from her life, in her words, is "earning my wings"

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

steak n bj

 

[mvbighead]

Immediate family, nothing. Cousins etc., whatever they think is right. Don't do much for non family, but I'd base it on whatever the job is and just go lower than a comparable service fee from GeekSquad or whatever.

I cannot for the life of me understand hourly rates unless I were on site. I personally prefer to take the physical machine home and work on it at my leisure. If I am scanning for viruses, no sense watching paint dry while waiting for a scan to finish.

 

[fatpat268]

$50/hr for everyone except for immediate family.

I'm generally not interested in fixing other people's shit, but, if I do it, it has to be worth my while.

 

[geno]

steak n bj

I hope you don't help your family with computer problems.

 

[Wyndru]

Wow, I should really start doing this on the side, I get asked all the time at work but had no idea how much it was worth (and like I mentioned in an earlier post, I don't wanna work for food).

I just figured since most kids in high school know how to fix computers these days it would be a worthless trade. If people actually pay amounts like $20-30/hour, I might start considering some of these requests. Most of them are simple malware/virus removal so it would be a little time consuming, yet brainless work.

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

Wow, I should really start doing this on the side, I get asked all the time at work but had no idea how much it was worth (and like I mentioned in an earlier post, I don't wanna work for food).

I just figured since most kids in high school know how to fix computers these days it would be a worthless trade. If people actually pay amounts like $20-30/hour, I might start considering some of these requests. Most of them are simple malware/virus removal so it would be a little time consuming, yet brainless work.

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/nyc/1584333712.html

 

[Poulsonator]

I do $60/hr residential, and $100/hr business. Fairly standard rate.

Yep...I'm $50 / $95.

 

[Saga]

$50/first hour, $35/hour thereafter if in-home.

$35/first hour, $25/hour thereafter if brought to me.

$25 diagnostic/look-see fee which applies to first hour charge. Keeps the "Can you look at my computer to see what's wrong?" and expect that for free.

Odd. This is my EXACT pricing that I've been using for 3 years..

 

[dabuddha]

$75/hour.

For family I charge $50-$60/hr.

Less than that it's not worth the headache.

Wow, you charge your kids to read a bed time story to them?

 

[tcsenter]

I've never charged an hourly rate since I began to repair/service computers for extra income in the mid-1990s. Always a flat rate/fee for the job that is loosely based on difficulty or time that it will take, based on my experience of how difficult the job will be or how long it will take.

But it tends to be a real bargain for the customer relative to how much a computer shop would charge. However, I'm currently rethinking this approach.

One of my customers couldn't get in contact with me several months ago so she called Geek Squad. They came to her house and used the factory restore partition on her three year old machine (at least they backed-up and restored her user data). Charged her $150.00 and did NOT update any drivers, did NOT apply any patches or updates to the OS, did NOT install the latest versions of Adobe Reader, iTunes, Sun Java, et. al.

They basically left her system three years behind on EVERYTHING, turned-on automatic updates and left. I make sure EVERYTHING is up-to-date (and more) but charge about half as much.

 

[thescreensavers]

$30/hour

$80 for OS install supplying discs
$120 for OS install, with updates, free AV. Spyware protection, Firefox.. basic apps.

 

[Apple Of Sodom]

$110/hr but I charge fairly. For example, if you have a virus I will take the computer to my office and work on it, only charging for an hour when it took 6 hours for virus scan and malwarebytes to run.

I only service medical offices though and provide tech support to them. I have a lot of liability (e.g. losing patient data) and it takes specialized knowledge. I also sell medical software and hardware.

People may think it is a bitch job to do computer work. I had sales of over $500,000 (gross) last year, and that is doing it part time. Granted some of the software I sell is uber expensive, but I do still net around 50% of gross.

 

[SlitheryDee]

As far as anyone but me is concerned I don't know shit about computers.

 

[Apple Of Sodom]

As far as anyone but me is concerned I don't know shit about computers.

I don't know why you wouldn't use a skill to make money. I understand sometimes working on family stuff is lame but there is another side to it.

I don't work (generally speaking) on Joe Idiot's computer. He'll just fuck it up and bitch about how it was my fault.

Do work for professionals who also charge a lot for their skill and who rely on their computer to make money. See, if someone loses $1,000/hr that their computer is down, they don't mind paying you $100/hr to fix it. I have also found that pre-selling my time to offices works very well. For a small discount I provide proactive support, ensuring that their computers and network are kept up to date and running smoothly. This way I still get paid, rarely have huge problems, and my customer is happy because they aren't ever down. I get paid a premium fee and essentially a retainer fee to be available.

Also, I'm fucking great at what I do.

 

[syee]

I only fix computers for immediate family and friends for free. They gotta bring their PC to me otherwise I ain't fixing it. (unless of course I happen to be at their place)

I really only have one person who takes advantage of this - they're actually just a friend of a friend - they only talk to me when they need something (i.e. their computer to be fixed), otherwise, I never hear from them. In those cases, I'll only help them if I'm not busy.

 

[Away]

$25 per hour with a two hour minimum. Parts and software are extra of course.

 

[irishScott]

$10 if I can solve it in an hour, $15 flat if I can't, $5 if I can't fix it but can tell them what the problem is. I don't intend to make any serious money off of it though, and most of my "customers" are fellow poor college students.

Friends and Family get it for free.

 

[Ksyder]

Most of the work I do is for folks at a retirement community and I charge them $40 per hr. on site. It is very cheap but its only a 20 minute drive away and usually their problems are very simple. Alot of times it is doing what the Maintenance guys can't, such as getting Macs hooked up to the internet. They don't seem to get that TCP/IP is built into Mac OS, if the cable modem disc won't run, they don't know what to do.

They have their own cable modem system there all hooked up to a T3 or something (not sure).

 

[gigahertz20]

I've only worked on family/friends computers. Most of the time it's free, but if it's something major they usually give me some money since I'm unemployed right now. I did a complete reinstall on an uncles desktop the other week, he gave me $50 which was fine by me.

I'm thinking about trying to make some money fixing/setting up computers on the side but where do most of you get your customers from? I'm guessing the best option would be to setup a Craigslist ad, and maybe print up a flyer with all your rates/information and go around to neighborhoods nearby where you live and hang them on door knobs. I bet alot of people would keep that flyer and potentially call you in the future. Word of mouth is the biggest customer base builder, but you need to get customers first before you can get that.

I'm thinking if I did this, my starting rates would be a $40 appearance fee including 1st half hour. Every hour after that would be $30. For a complete system install, most of the time you are sitting there waiting for updates/system restarts and other time wasters, so I'd probably charge a maximum of $130 no matter how long it took me.

Just load it up with software and disc images, then use it for cloning the original drive and the freshly-installed drive (usually that's enough space for most client's computers). The workflow boils down to:

1. Get computer from the client
2. Plug in 1TB, install Macrium, and clone their original system to an image
3. Install Windows, drivers, Office, A/V, then run updates
4. Install software (including Macrium) and do tweaks
5. Clone their new system to the USB drive
6. Copy their old system image to the desktop
7. Run Memtest86+ overnight
8. Deliver to happy customer

Good information, but what do you do for driver updates? Do you manually hunt for them or use a program like Driver Genius that automatically scans the system and can download new driver updates?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have been charging $10/hr for general work, diagnosis, etc. If I have to drive to a site, I count the drive time against the charge, and I require a two-hour minimum. This is for residential customers. For business customers, I would charge $50/hr. But I don't really go after business customers, I'm not certified in servers and networking, although I would like to be. I generally service the "poor", more or less, who have older computers, and can't afford to get a brand-new cutting-edge one, although I would be more than happy to help build one of those for them.

Other things, I charge a flat fee. HD upgrade (including cloning the old disk to the new one) = $50. Reformat and re-install, including all service packs, drivers, and some freeware added on = $50. Backup of old data is extra. I charge for parts, obviously, and I mark them up as appropriate. For example, I bought some ram for $30 a stick, but it was labeled $40. So I charged $40 a stick. HD labeled $80, paid $60 on sale, so I charged $80. Easy things like RAM updates or video card updates or whatever I charge a flat fee of $20 or so. (Figure I'm making some profit on the parts though too.)


Malware removal is by the hour.

Most of the time, if they have a problem that I cannot fix, I don't charge them (except for any parts).

I do work for my immediate family for free. Friends, I charge, sometimes. It depends.

I also have a small circle of clients that I've either serviced, or sold computers to. If I can solve a problem over the phone, I don't charge.

For computers, I charge $100 over the cost of the hardware to build/install it. ($50 for physically building and testing, and $50 for the OS install, updates, etc.) I give an informal hardware-only warranty of one year for the computer. Software problems get charged for.

OH, and this is important - DO NOT sell computers on an installment plan. It takes forever to get your money, and some customers will stiff you.

 

[gigahertz20]

I flat rate at reasonable rates . BUT if I find porn is the problem I return as is and tell them not to come back . I also refuse to sell to certain people . Its my RIGHTS. But I do very little in that area anymore. Other than my desk workstations and Bob does most the work . My daughter will take anyones money.

But everybody looks at porn, redtube FTW!