Tech Support / Consultation Question

Eticket

Eticket

Pointy Stick
FC/Active Member
Between my friends and family, I'm 'the computer guy'. Typically I'm the one that everyone refers to with problems with their PCs.

One of Eden's coworkers asked me to clean up her laptop because it's been slow as hell lately.

So I've been working on it off and on for the last week. First and foremost it's a laptop running Vista that by no means has any business trying to. It's a celeron with 512kb ram. I've already advised her to upgrade to XP at some point, but explaining PC stuff to her is like explaining it to a puppy.

It's been a week and I've managed to defrag it and clean out all the bloatware that came with it, along with adding Spybot and scanning for any spyware. Somehow she already managed to have CC Cleaner installed, so I've been running that to clean up the registry.

So my question comes down to this. She insists on paying me. I have no idea how much to charge someone for something like this. I was thinking $15-$20 per hour would be a standard rate if I was doing this for a business. Does that sound reasonable? If so, I'll probably charge her a bit less than the going rate as a 'friend of family' type of thing.
 
Honestly 15-20 dollars an hour is on the low end. If you take your PC to place like best buy or somewhere that works on PC you are looking at upwards to 40-50 an hour sometimes more.

Most the time when I do something like that for a friend or family member and they say they have to pay and its something to the extent that you did I normally just say $50. $10-$20 if its a quick fix. Normally I don't charge though unless I don't know them.
 
Well it definitely wasn't a quick fix. lol

Been fighting it in my spare time for a week now. I've probably put 12-14 hours into it.
 
Never, ever do that without coming to an agreement beforehand. It inevitably ends up being a problem with one party or the other. I'd say have the coworker take you two to a nice dinner and cut your losses. Next time say it will be $X/hour and what is the maximum time they want you to spend on it.
 
Eticket said:
Well it definitely wasn't a quick fix. lol

Been fighting it in my spare time for a week now. I've probably put 12-14 hours into it.
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when I do something like that for a friend or family member and they say they have to pay and its something to the extent that you did I normally just say $50
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I just rebuilt my sister's laptop from scratch including transfering all her data that was over 80 gigs of stuff. That took me about 10 hours. I didn't charge her cause she is my sister but if it was a friend I would have prob said $50. If its someone I don't know I would have done what Fodder said.
 
Fodder said:
Never, ever do that without coming to an agreement beforehand. It inevitably ends up being a problem with one party or the other. I'd say have the coworker take you two to a nice dinner and cut your losses. Next time say it will be $X/hour and what is the maximum time they want you to spend on it.
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I completely agree with Fodder on this. The work you did was worth more than the dinner, but to give a number they'll see as high will only lead to hurt feelings (and it will seem high to them, even picking a low hourly rate). Enjoy the nice dinner, and if it comes up again, decide on a rate and cap ahead of time.
 
One of my current tenant brought me a laptop. The sucker took 10+ minutes to boot because of Vista and MS office.I scanned for Viruses (none found) I formatted the machine and put Windows XP on it and now it flys. 512meg RAM and Vista==Slow ass notebook. Total time 3 hrs and i charged him $50 bux. I get $1200 rent per month from this bum!
 
Varda said:
and it will seem high to them, even picking a low hourly rate
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That right there is the issue. Hourly rate. Even if you charged something ridiculously low like $10/hr, you'd have like $120-$140 which may seem high to her. Heie mentioned a flat fee of like $50. Flat fees are good in this case even though it jips you with how much time you spent. You can probably get away with $100 with her, but I think if you go over that is when she'll start to balk. Part of the problem in helping friends...

A way around this that might get you more "value" and avoid the money issue is "gift in kind". I do this with my family and friends all the time. "Hey, why don't you fill up my car and we'll call it even," or "Okay, but you get to buy groceries this week." Or like fodder said, have them take you out to dinner. Be sure to get the $40 steak. :p Or Eden doesn't have a car right? Maybe just have the coworker give her rides to/from work for a bit to save you gas (and at $4.13/gal here, that adds up).
 
I no longer provide technical support to most of the extended family/friends. I ended up where that's all I was doing all the time and they'd repeatedly F stuff up. Now I only do for my better half, my kids, my mom, and 1 friend. Come to think of it I'm going to replace mom's this year when Dell has it's next $300 fire sale.
 
Just for reference:

I charged standard rates for everyone that didn't live in my own house:

Standard Home Visit for Diagnosis: $80 ($100 outside 30miles)
Standard Home Visit additional per hour (after 2 hours): $50/hour
Basic System Format / OS Install: $300 (plus parts if necessary)

What happened was that only the people that really needed major help contacted me. On average, I could fix most basic problems within two hours. If a machine was so overrun with adware/viruses, I'd reccomend a format/reinstall to save on hourly charges of clean up. (saving their vital data of course first, even provided them a copy of it for backup on a DVD.)

It was a good side-job for quick cash. ;)
 
I ended up with $100 with the agreement that I'll do some work on her wi-fi network if needed next week.

I suggested XP, but she doesn't want to do it yet.
 
Eticket said:
I ended up with $100 with the agreement that I'll do some work on her wi-fi network if needed next week.

I suggested XP, but she doesn't want to do it yet.
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Urgh, do that poor woman an extreme, vital, super, extreme, hyper, paramount, benediction of a favor and make her switch to XP.

If you have to, get a picture of Osama and caption it 'Vista' then get a picture of Jesus and caption it 'XP' and show them to her. Yes, I know both have beards, but if she don't get it by then...may God have mercy on us all.
 
Furax, I owe you my soul. Where would you like it mailed to?
 
Redd said:
Furax, I owe you my soul. Where would you like it mailed to?
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Mail it in the crack between his buttcheeks :rolleyes:.
On a serious note, I like Vista the way it is. I mainly use it as a media center PC streaming videos and music to my home theater system.
 
Aluciont said:
Mail it in the crack between his buttcheeks :rolleyes:.
On a serious note, I like Vista the way it is. I mainly use it as a media center PC streaming videos and music to my home theater system.
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Who the hell are you and why are you posting in my linkshell's forum?
 
Aluciont said:
Mail it in the crack between his buttcheeks :rolleyes:.
On a serious note, I like Vista the way it is. I mainly use it as a media center PC streaming gay porn videos and salsa dance music to my home theater system.
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I miss you
 
AoC is a big disappointment much like Soj right now and World of Warcraft... :eek:.

I'm posting here because no one would talk to me on vent! :)
 
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