Starting Small Computer Buisness

[Fliko]

I am recently moving and was planning on starting a small computer buisness for fixing, tweaking, upgrading, or building computers.

I still have to do much more research on the legals, but I was wondering if someone could give me a whole line of average prices people now-a-days charge for fixing computers, and things like that.

Also, perhaps some tips on starting a buisness.

 

[Ennui]

my friend charges $25 an hour to fix PCs, and people pay it

 

[ComradeBadger]

Heh.

I'll give you a price list from my work if you fancy - prices will be in pounds (and they may be slightly inaccurate)

£30 an hour is not unreasonable for professional work - I do around that for my wireless networking stuff.

 

[Adidajs]

first tip: spell it "business".

 

[Dog--]

The place I go charges about $30 CDN an hour (thats like 24-25 $ US)

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

I charge upwards of $20/h (under the table )
or if you can't afford it,
I don't mind staying for dinner.

Done that twice so far.

 

[Zombie]

What exactly entails "fixing" someone's computer? Like, what if you can't figure it out? Reformat? I would go around asking people if their computers needed fixing, but I'm afraid of just running into a problem I haven't encountered, like some new fangled virus I can't tackle.

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

If you can't "fix" a virus, you tell them to shell out cash for anti-virus software. It either will work or it won't, but I can tell you right now a puny virus is child's play compared to some of what I've seen.
Some people make screwing up their computer an art form.

 

[Naudian]

^ It's true!

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

^ It's true!

I once spent roughly 5 hours just trying to make someone's PC bootable and stable.
When the OS goes to load, there was nothing but pop ups and spam images.
If you click something, there is a good 1-2 minute wait before something happened, and chances are you'd get an error of some kind. :|

After about two days I eventually got MAME running MVC pretty good, with no video card.
I think it was a 1.7Ghz Celeron pos.

 

[ComradeBadger]

Heh. I could tell you all some proper horror stories.

To Zombie, one of the best ways is to image their drive - put it on a spare HDD, scan it from another computer, delete all the bollocks from it - and format their hard drive, then simply image the fixed HDD, and put it back on their orignal.



We did that with our BIG problems..

 

[Asus]

I know CompUSA charges a flat-rate of 100$ for repairs and many other things, 80$ for an OS install, 20$ for tuneup. lol

I personally just go about 20$ an hour for most things. Which is a bit low IMO. If I did it all the time as a job I would probably would charge 30-40. If customers know how much businesses charge then they won't be shocked by any price you say. I know I've gone in to repair some machines and people want to pay me 30-40$ anyway. The simple stuff may be easy for you but people are really clueless about it and it causes some a lot of stress for their PC not to work.

 

[ComradeBadger]

I tend to charge around $60 USD (around £35) for a full professional tuneup/cleanup/repair/recovery (yes I do data recovery too... that's a BASTARD sometimes)

Simple health checks I charge around $7

The thing is with me is that they know they can contact me at any time on my mobile if they need help, they can also go into our shop to talk to me/browse our parts selection