How much do you charge.....

SiD the Turtle said:
I've looked at doing this before as £30ph is quite attractive, but do any of you guys really get enough business to survive on it, or is it mainly an on the side after the 9-5 type thing.
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You have to remember that £30 is before all tax & expenses.
 
Tesla said:
You have to remember that £30 is before all tax & expenses.
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AND until you get into good practises/make sure any warrenty from your work is understood includes working for free if you did **** up. It also pays for the irritation of people who though you only changed a mouse insist your responsible for their machine blowing up etc.
 
£30 call out including the first hour, £20 thereafter. If I have to make multiple trips I dont re-charge a call out fee.

Family - free
Friends - pay

If you advertise make sure you declare to the tax man. I tend to install some remote software ie vnc to make future calls easier as I can just connect up.
 
Family and Friends I mostly do for nothing, however if its something to do with something that they need for work then I charge £8 an hour...and that goes for everyone else.
 
Depends on the problem.

I don't charge a call out fee, and don't really charge by the hour.

Something like re-installing the OS, I'll charge £30 (including pickup and re-delivery of the computer).

If a piece of hardware needs replacing, I'll charge £20 for the work and then whatever it costs on top of that for parts.

I have good months and bad months. In August, I calculated that I recieved almost £200 from PC repairs :eek: And that's just doing it in my spare time.
 
£500 per day.

But I only work for corporates who expect to pay through the nose or they think you're no good.

:D
 
I spend all day fixing computers, so the last thing when i get home is to do is fix some more.

I dont mind fixing immediate family's computers or close friends for nothing.

But i make it clear that, its not my job to fix there computers all the time.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Everyone else..... £80 Per Hour normally.
 
Bitchplz said:
I spend all day fixing computers, so the last thing when i get home is to do is fix some more.

I dont mind fixing immediate family's computers or close friends for nothing.

But i make it clear that, its not my job to fix there computers all the time.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Everyone else..... £80 Per Hour normally.
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£80. Does anyone actually pay?!
 
Rotty said:
it's a good strategy though, he either makes good money or they clear off and stop bugging him
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Exactly why i charge what i do.

For some cases where it takes 20 minutes or so i dont charge the full whack.
 
I might also point out that I've just folded my business because I'm absolutely sick of it, but been doing it for 4 years now. I never made the big bucks I thought I would but I have dropped into a decent role back in employment in a similar field.
 
friends and family i dont charge i get a case of beer or something to that effect i charge £50 for a full system build, addtional £10 if they want it installed for them. I will just normally charge £20 for the normal fixes most which take under an hour. Full backup and operating system reinstallation £35.

thedazman
 
I charge what the market will bear, and that depends on what the job is, what skills and skill levels it requires and who the customer is. My rate also varies according to whether I want the job or not, and there are some customers I won't work for no matter what the rate is.

Establishing what the market will bear is the tricky bit. Overprice, and you not only lose customers but get a reputation for being expensive, or worse yet, a rip-off artist. On the other hand, undercharge and people take you for granted and don't respect you. Some people will also assume that if you're too cheap, you obviously can't be any good or you'd be able to charge more, so they'll go elsewhere anyway because they want a competent job. To be honest, I'm rather like that myself .... I tend to assume if it looks to be to be true, it probably is.

Another major factor in determining market rate is whether you are trying to build a business, or whether you're established with a steady (or better yet, excessive) workload without having to seek to drum up new business.

Trickiest, perhaps, is dealing with aggrieved customers. There is a considerable degree of people skill involved in calming an angry person down and making them see things rationally, without getting walked all over in the process.

As for my actual rates, I don't do PC work so it isn't relevant. The principes are broadly the same, though.
 
I have a sliding scale of alcohol based charges ranging from a couple of pints down the pub for simple tasks like spyware removal/cleaning up etc. up to bottles of expensive malt for major upgrades and system builds.

Works for me. I find that people are less likely to expect you to fix it for free if something goes wrong if they haven't paid cash.

Stan :)
 
Bigstan said:
.... I find that people are less likely to expect you to fix it for free if something goes wrong if they haven't paid cash.
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That, I can imagine, is a major problem with PC work. But, if I've had a mechanic replace the brake pads on my car, and paid cash, I don't expect him to work for free if the exhaust goes a week later, or the car stereo packs up.

So why do people see it differently with PCs?

Often, I think it comes down to lack of respect for the skill and knowledge involved in solving many PC problems. After all, if schoolkids can do it, how hard can it be? So why should it be expensive? That seems to be the logic many people use.
 
£60 Callout or Collect/Return inc. 30mins labour. (Provided reasonable/fair distance)
£40 p/h thereafter.

Out of hours (6pm-9pm) expect to pay 1.5x/2x that :p
 
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