Do you charge family $$
- Thread starter nobbie48
- Start date
I'm amazed anyone that isn't a professional corporate IT guy charges to fix computers. Although most places that charge for it actually just rip people off.
Well it is often time intensive, technically fixing computers is my day job but I avoid it. A lot of stuff could be done by the computer user but most stuff is caused by the user in the first place (mal/adware). You are also paying for the persons Google skills. But how much does an oil change cost on a car? It's what a 20 minute job? Mostly people are lazy. I'd do the it thing for consumers but the horror stories. Plus the expectations a lot of people have with file recovery and hardware, some stuff has no moving parts so people think it should last for ever and be just as fast with today's software. Or there's expectations that peripherals should have drivers written for the latest OS 10 years after the item was discontinued.
This is true. I guess I just presume that pretty much anyone under the age of 30 should probably know how to fix a computer.
I don't even charge strangers to fix their computers but I avoid doing it because of all the negatives. For family I just give them free computers I've set up. If it ends up screwed after that I'm probably just going to reformat if running a few simple clean up programs can't clean it up.
If they're constantly screwing it up I tell them to buy Macs... They can still be screwed up it's just harder (and usually easier to repair) and timemachine comes standard.
I hear what you're saying but I don't buy the computers I give them or have to fix. Plus I have no idea how to use a Mac as I've only ever used one for maybe 5 minutes of my life. Although that one I knew how to use better than the owner (she had almost every application on the thing running in the background because she doesn't know how to close programs). Heh
I'm the guy that all of my friends and family calls when they need help with anything. Fixing stuff around the house, renovating, moving, computer problems, electrical problems, plumbing, etc. I never charge, ever. They will usually feed me and they're obviously responsible for buying the materials. I do find I have to start saying no when people are just endlessly asking me to help with things. Even people close to you can start to unintentionally abuse your generosity.
I wonder how many people think about ow much it would cost to fix things if they had to pay tradespeople. The handyman is a Godsend to a lot of people. If a commercial company sends a marginally trained individual they have to charge an absolute minimum of $50.00 per hour to cover the vehicle, WSIB, insurance etc. Put in for travel time and run around for a part and it's a hundred dollars to hang a picture / change a light bulb etc.
See in 5 minutes you figured out to use a mac. In a day you would be a power user. I got into OSX when I had a freeBSD server for my mail and personal website and I noticed most of the people administering BSD servers used Macs. I also ended up supporting OSX at work and it was way easier to fix, broke less and the fixes didn't break other things. We would have say 10 different problems and we would fix it the same way vs windows where you had 10 fixes for each problem and if you didn't use the correct fix you could break things worse.
Yep. I was having a similar conversation the other day with my contractor friend. I also used to work for a company a long time ago that serviced banks. Branches would routinely call us to change a light bulb and we'd charge them something ridiculous for it.
I help people close to me because I know how much money it will save them. Sometimes they're also interested in learning how to do certain things in which case I'm happy to share my knowledge/experience. As long as I don't feel I'm being taken for granted I don't mind helping out most of the time. But I definitely think people should put in at least some degree of effort to figure something out on their own before calling in a favour.
