Running / Starting a PC repair business,

edscdk · 28 Sep 2016 at 09:52

not seen any threads on this recently,

are many people doing this full time / on the side?

how's business going?

Personally I have been doing this on the side, I have wound down a bit - turning away jobs I know will be a PITA or that are a bit too far away.. Probably resulting in a 40% drop in work and maybe 25% drop in income,

Its been very easy money over the past few years (especially now I know what to turn away)

edscdk · 28 Sep 2016 at 10:49

Glanza said:
Are you trading as a company whilst doing this or cash in hand repairs for people?

ltd company all legit and above board with an accountant and invoice and no counterfeit software.. full time employer aware of this side work as well, taxes paid up... not registered as an MP (so im not claiming for moats and switching main property's / claiming for rent boys on expences etc etc etc)

edscdk · 3 Oct 2016 at 15:38

Diagro said:
Why would that help?

After all the customer is "always right".

No matter what proof you can supply that their devices were in actual face fine when they left, they still accuse and demand refunds blah blah.
Weather they get a refund is a different matter, Once my 3 months has passed they pretty much get ignored unless they want me to repair again.

that scenario pretty much never happens, I've had a few secondary issues crop up that I have fixed for nothing, but when you have spare hard drives, ram, mobos and the know how its not a big issue..

I have probably avoided multiple "lost data" instances but strictly never formatting a customers drive without creating an image.

I rate customer service over all else, any problem they get a refund / or the problem rectified I have given maybe 5 / 10 refunds out of several 1000 jobs..

edscdk · 3 Oct 2016 at 15:46

D3K said:
How much money does this draw in for you guys? On an hourly basis?

I'm too cheap I charge £45 for a fix (as long as its under 2 hours), £70 for a reinstall

I have done this for so long I know the fix for almost everything and most visits are under 45 mins @£45

bearing in mind I was working full time as well I think my company return was something like 15k last year

regular customers get charged less for quickies!

edscdk · 7 Nov 2016 at 09:13

danielanthony said:
Shame you can't charge the same as electricians or plumbers, I doubt you'd get them charging £45 for something which takes up to 2 hours to fix!

most pc people will charge 2 hours if it takes 2 hours

edscdk · 7 Nov 2016 at 11:12

EVH said:
£70 for a reinstall? How does that work with licences?

E.g. Mr X brings laptop in with Windows 7. Do you use the same key and a new image?

key is on the machine (usually) so new clean image + the key that's on the laptop.. 30mins later fire up driverpacks, bang in the key from the laptop and copy their docs etc back...

(I usually take an image of the original hdd assuming its not faulty so there is no chance of anything getting lost)

job done

edscdk · 7 Nov 2016 at 14:20

Cromulent said:
I've seriously considered doing something like this. Maybe I should give it a go. The only problem is that there is a local PC shop that has taken most of the local business so it would be hard to get people to go with me over them since they've been established for about 10 years now.

I know I have some specialist knowledge that they are lacking though particularly when it comes to things like Linux / FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

anyone running unix will not be calling for help! You can undercut the shop since you don't have a shop to pay for.. Call the shop tell them you PC will not boot windows, ask how much they will charge to collect it, reinstall windows, copy your files back then return it to you.. I doubt there will be change form £140

Just make sure you keep a decent lot of spares, I got a shed load of stuff in my boot! never want to have to revisit for lack of a USB mouse or wireless adapter