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Thread ID: 49274	2004-09-14 19:46:00	Repairs: do you charge "labor" ?	Earnie Moore (5918)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
272369	2004-09-15 00:16:00	I took my laptop to an apparently well-established and reputable 'computer fixit' company a few weeks ago to get it configured to work with a new wireless access point which was to be plugged into our ADSL router (all this for home use). I did this because I didn't know how to do it myself. The next day the guy from the company rang me and said he couldn't get it to work and he suspected the access point was duff. At this point I asked him much it had cost me. He said he had been working in it for three hours but would only charge me for two hours because he was uncertain what the problem was. I drove over, picked up the AP from him, took it back to Dick Smith's, got a replacement one and took it back to the guy. I said to him that I didn't want to incur too much more cost and if it is wasn't going to work I would stick with our existing ethernet cable rather than the AP. He agreed I could go up to the work-room with him to watch him working with the new AP. After watching him fiddle for five minutes I realised he didn't have the hardware Wi-Fi switch switched 'on' on the side of the laptop case. I showed him and he had the whole thing running in five minutes - and was acutely embarrassed. By this time he had spent the thick end of four hours on the job. It should have taken, what? - 20 mins? I asked him how much he was going to charge me and he said "...an hour and a half??" I didn't really want to argue, he was a nice guy who made a silly mistake, so I agreed and it cost me $75 per hour plus gst = $120-odd, plus my time and money driving around etc. The point is, if I hadn't gone to watch him, he would have said the whole setup was stuffed and I would have been puzzled but none the wiser.	basil (2970)
272370	2004-09-15 00:19:00	Very sorry for posting same thing three times - couldn't figure out what was happening when I clicked ....	basil (2970)
272371	2004-09-15 00:23:00	From a customer point of view, the main priority to me would be whether the person fixing my notebook had experience in Toshiba notebooks, whether the malfunctioning computer part was replaced with a new identical piece (not another make which was compatible), and if, while my notebook was in their care, it was damaged, do they have an insurance policy that covered it. This is my 2nd computer and I will never be able to afford another, so I am naturally very cautious about what happens to it. The cost of repair does not appear exhorbitant going by what has been said so far, in fact have been pleasantly surprised considering what I have heard from other consumers. Marg.	pulling hair out (4493)
272372	2004-09-15 00:28:00	Before I really got into the PC Repairs business - My family took their PC to a local "fix-it man". Motherboard was dead, and needed replacing. We got a new Mobo / CPU. Celeron 933Mhz. Kept the old SD-RAM (96MB worth) Charged us 4 hours labour to swap the motherboard. Total cost was around $790 IIRC All in all - I guess it pays to get a quote before you commit, so you can go elsewhere should you need to.	Chilling_Silence (9)
272373	2004-09-15 00:48:00	All businesses have this problem. Do you nominate a fixed price for certain regular work? Or do you always charge the time involved? What about the "learning curve" problems? Customers, naturally like to know what something will cost. The problem with computers is that the length of the job can be analogous to the length of a piece of string. No-one knows until the job is done. So usually a compromise such as Metla adopts is the best answer. A fixed price for removing spyware etc, and time based for more complex work. And I strongly object to the word "incompetent" for a technician who doesn't know the immediate answer. There is no expert, whether in the field of computers, medicine, law, or engineering who knows every answer. The difference between an expert and the man on the street, is that the expert understands the subject and knows where to look for answers. Ultimately the customer must pay (at least partly) for this on the job learning.	Winston001 (3612)
272374	2004-09-15 02:06:00	Don't sell labour, sell "technical services", "Diagnostic time", "Repair Time", "Job time" or anything else that removes the pickaxe and shovel from your hands. Labouring is moving things around, like digging holes or humping bricks, and in any event, only Americans and Australians labor. Cheers Billy 8-{)	Billy T (70)
272375	2004-09-15 02:17:00	I fully agree with you, Winston001. There is no 'expert' in this world who knows every answer.	bk T (215)
272376	2004-09-15 02:27:00	> Do you charge "labor" for computer repairs? > If so why? are you not selling a service your > customer does not know what to do? or put it another > way, If most of your customers knew how to fix it, > don't think they would do it instead, yes I sell my labor or time or what ever you wish to call it . if the customer knows how to fix it then why do they call me? labor accounts for about %40 of most jobs I do . let me tell a story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . some years ago I got a phone call from a nice lady who told me that she had "lost" the administrator password for the NT server, some tech company have quoted $2000 to format and reinstall the server and then recover data from backup tape . a friend of hers had told her to ring me . I had a offline password disk . . . I told her I could do it for $100, she was very happy . when I got there and worked my magic it took about 3 minutes in total . when she saw how I fixed the password problem she said "that was too easy, i am not paying $100 for that!!" my only answer was "if it was that easy then why didn't you do it yourself . . . . . . " she paid $150 the end . the point is that she is paying for my skill, knowledge and my time, all of this come under the heading of labor .	robsonde (120)
272377	2004-09-15 02:38:00	> the point is that she is paying for my skill, > knowledge and my time, all of this come under the > heading of labor. Exactly! You have a skill that many dont - Therefore it is worth something. Gold is worth something because it is of limited quantity... There's only one of me so heck I must be worth millions! ;-)	Chilling_Silence (9)
272378	2004-09-15 02:45:00	> > the point is that she is paying for my skill, > > knowledge and my time, all of this come under the > > heading of labor . > > Exactly! > You have a skill that many dont - Therefore it is > worth something . BTW that story was from back in 1999, not many people knew that an off line password tool (linux) was out there . in todays world every tech and his dog has a offline password tool, so i would only charge $50 for the exact same service .	robsonde (120)
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