Hi,
I started my business a year ago after leaving my job doing basically the same thing for insurance companies.
Things I have lived and learned from, get a heads up from me:
- Even if a customer wants a job done quickly, do not ever say it will be done sooner than you think is reasonable. It may get you the job, but if it takes longer than you stated (i.e. waiting for part) then this customer is unlikely to choose you again, plus you'll get constant calls every day checking on the status.
- Get a good list of suppliers before you start out, preferably ones with next day delivery, this can often solve the above anyway. Especially if you're going to repair laptops as well.
- Don't undercharge. This is one major mistake I made in the beginning. Find out what your competition charges and charge the same or just over. Do not undercharge compared to your competition any more than £5 per hour. It gets you work in the beginning, but from people who want "something for nothing". Set your price and stick to it, you'll get a higher quality of client and makes you look more professional, not "the guy down the pub who can fix your pc for a score".
- Make sure you have at least one day a week where you can relax. Arrange part delivery times and callouts around this day. Trust me, you may feel desperate for work in the beginning but it's all about balance. It's not nice to constantly run around 7 days a week while others are relaxing or drinking.
- Set your personal voicemail message up.
- If you haven't already got liability insurance, I got mine from
www.simplybusiness.co.uk and got £70 free adwords vouchers from them. You'll probably waste the £70 to start but it helps you learn how to use and manage adwords, make mistakes without £70 coming out of your own pocket.
- Sit back and wait for the calls to flood. Any customers you think are a bit of a pain while calling, or hassle you on price, do not accept the job. They are looking for something for nothing and I've learned the hard way.
Bringing back a PC I replaced a motherboard, backed up data, reinstalled and transfered the data back, only to be engaged in a "bartering" process is not fun.
- DISCLAIMERS, DISCLAIMERS, DISCLAIMERS. I cannot stress this enough, think up a list of terms, such as "once the customer has confirmed that order of a part should take place this serves as being committed to the repair." Customers calling once you've ordered a part for their machine saying they no longer want it done will lose you money, whether it's delivery cost to send the part back or inability to get a refund at all.
Any more help, just ask, those are just a few of the problems I have encountered which came from the top of my head.
Get a copy of UBCD and integrate Malwarebytes in to it. Look at a couple of tutorials on the internet. You have to do a full scan, the quick scan doesn't function correctly, though it allows you to use malwarebytes locked out of the operating system.
Regarding Combofix, I use it, it's a lot more efficient, but make sure you get a new copy of it every day as any old copies and it goes in to "limitation" mode when you try to run it. I learned the hard way in the beginning when it closed itself and deleted itself from my USB stick.