my rant why do we do it

like many on these forums i bet, i got into computers because off games not because off my job and have spent a lot off time over the years learning to solve problems myself . but now i seem to spend less and less of my free time playing games and more and more time helping other people sometimes a little knowledge can be a curse :(
 
Its not so much the fixing thats the problem, its more the fact that you know as soon as you hand the machine back into their hands, its going to go back exactly how it was.

You may aswel just goto their house, sit there for an hour or 2, and say done.
 
I don't really do any of what I call "private work" any more.
I used to look after many friends machines, work colleagues, relatives etc but just found it too much work.
Certainly the money is nice, but no amount of money I'm afraid can really make up for my time which I value highly.

I have the PC's in my house which I look after.
My brothers gets looked after
My parents - they know absolutely nothing, so I look after theirs.

Basically they are the only machines I'll look at (with one other exception. A close friend is a car bodywork repairer by trade so he is extremely important to keep sweet).
If anyone else asks I do decline and say that I don't really have the time in an evening.

Doing the work isn't the problem, accepting money isn't the problem.
The problem comes when they keep on contacting you for support.
Just because I fix somebody's machine does not give them the right to call me up in an evening asking me how to format something in Word or mail merge something etc.
You do have to get to a point where you realise that any amount of money being offered to you to do a repair/upgrade etc just isn't worth it.
 
Ive got my gf's friends laptop sitting here, shes wondering why its running slow

Windows XP home running on a 2 gig hdd

Fantastic.
 
i love helping people out with their pc probs because i want to be a systems support person when im older so its valuable experience, i never ask for money (off either family or friends) especially from direct family e.g your mum and dad because thats not really fair as they pay for a lot of things i do (e.g rc car racing, half of whatever my clothes cost etc, i have to pay other half with paper round money) :D
 
I wouldn't mind too much if they had a decent pc, but more often than not it's a tank, and takes stupid amounts of time to do the simplest things, that's what annoys me.
 
I tend to operate on the beer principal. If it's going to take a few hours of my down time it's going to cost you one way or another and that usually involves beer. This is the system I prefer to use as I once made the mistake of building a PC at cost and giving the person concerned the option of putting whatever they felt was appropriate on top. They gave me £4.

One thing that totally pee's me off is after I take the time to redo a PC and someone installs something stupid like those annoying emoticon's.

That said this will go down as a classic for as long as I live:

Me: Your laptop hard drive is toast (nice head grinding 'music') and you'll have to pay a fortune for data recovery because you didn't back up your data and it's your accounts. You realise you are legally required to be able to reporduce them for 7 years ?
Them: I did back it up though
Me: Oh great where are the backups ?
Them: On my laptop (hard drive)

I gave up after that.
 
I'd gladly do a favour for any one I considered a friend... I'm not really techy or anything, but I was at a family friend's house and her computer wasn't working. Turns out she had the speaker cable plugged into the modem, the ISP settings were wrong and she wasn't sure how to put the ink into her printer. OK it didn't take 9 hours (more like half an hour!) but she was really grateful I "fixed" her computer and I got a couple of whiskeys in return.

I suppose you have to take into account (a) if the job you're doing is in your line of business how much could you have charged and (b) how good of friends are you - i.e. does this friend even appreciate what you did for them and would they be likely to return the favour.

Quick story about two people who I shall call Cian and Tim.
Cian had to move out of his house in Dublin but had no way of getting all his stuff back to Dundalk (over 50 miles away). Cian knew Tim was going to Dublin to shop so he asked him to collect all his stuff and give him a lift to Dundalk. When Tim was in Dublin, Cian was in a huge hurry to get back to Dundalk to watch stargate or something. Cian didn't offer to pay towards petrol, parking, motorway tolls, even though a taxi could have charged him over €100 if he took the fare at all - and how much would a removal van have cost? So, I'm not Tim but I'm pretty happy I'm not friends with Cian anymore!

I think once your friends are genuinely grateful for doing them a favour it can be payment enough.
 
I help people out where I can.

A colleague of my gf had her PC pack up recently, she went out and bought a laptop but wanted me to fish her data off it. She dropped it off at our house with a couple of cd-rws and after a bit of messing around I was able to pickup the HD on my rig and copy the files over.

Turned out quite well in the end for me, probably only took me around an hour but she said I could keep her PC as she didn't need it anymore anyway. Not sure what's wrong with it (hopefully PSU and not motherboard) but even if I can't get it running again, the hd, memory and optical drives are worth a few quid.

I've spent quite a lot of time on the phone to my dad lately explaining various things about his PC, it's family, I'm not going to charge him for that when I think of all the advice he's given me down the years.

Generally speaking I regard it as just part of the 'favours network' anyway. I mean, say I help people out with the computers, then one of them is a plumber who can change a tap, someone else will drive places, etc.

Unless I literally slaved my guts out for a whole day on a computer I wouldn't expect any kind of payment. Most of the time I quite enjoy it anyway.
 
For good friends and family, I do what I can, free of charge - free cake and tea required though. For work colleagues or friends of friends, they need to show me the money (these are also the ones who, when you built them a PC 10 months ago, seem to think it comes with a lifetime warranty when all they do is fill it with spyware, porn and keep a collection of mans most virulent infections).
 
slap ed said:
you have probably all heard it before (you know something about computers can you have a look at mine )and so i ended up with my freinds computer a lovely pentium 2 400 mhz with 256mb ram and a ten gig hard drive .anyway on first boot it literely took twenty minutes to boot up it was that full off viruses and spyware and nine hours later when i had finished after ewido found 306 problems and after that avg found nine trojans two it couldn't heal , it took 1min 23 secs to fully boot (not bad for an old brick ). my point being why do we willingly give up a whole day to help people out , i mean he's a freind so i wouldn't charge him . but lets say you charged him minimum wage nine hours say forty quid he would probably feel narked you would want money (for just looking at his computer) so why do we do it we must be mad . :confused:
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so you havent the "it was ok untill you did it..." phone call yet? - thats the best one.

I do all my freinds computers for free (especially the lady friends ;)) but I tell them before hand if it doesnt work than its not my problem, I am your friend, not a customer service line.
 
HangTime said:
Generally speaking I regard it as just part of the 'favours network' anyway. I mean, say I help people out with the computers, then one of them is a plumber who can change a tap, someone else will drive places, etc.
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That's a good way of looking at favours, but I still think it's different for friends. If some one's a real friend I don't think you should necessarily expect something back.
 
Me neither. What I was getting at is that what goes around comes around, anyone who is a 'real friend' as you put it would likely help me out if they could.
 
It can be a pain to do it, but if they are a good friend then I have no problem doing it. The idea of charging a friend money for a favour is repulsive.
 
Carzy said:
The idea of charging a friend money for a favour is repulsive.
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You clearly need to adopt the beer system :D Drop your PC off with a 4 pack and it comes back fixed, win win situation for all concerned ... unless they stay and help you drink the beer ... then it's not so great.
 
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