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Tech Support Businesses on the Rise
prostoalex writes "People are relying on more technology that ever before, and tech support geek squads are on the rise, media reports. The USA Today article says Best Buy has hired 1,500 more technicians for its Geek Squad and CompUSA currently keeps its tech support ranks at 12,000. The article from Digital Connect magazine talks about Geeks On Call, a nationwide tech support franchise, which has more than 300 shops in 20 states. The USA Today article states the profit margins for the tech support teams generally run within 30%, while the Digital Connect magazine gives an estimate on prices charged to achieve the margins: "An initial diagnostics call, for example, could run $99. Cleanup jobs usually run one to two hours, and some franchisees say they charge between $149 and $165 for one hour and $265 to $275 for two hours.""
So, if you think it's going to take 3 hours to fix, just go out and buy a new computer.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
..because the cup-holder on my computer will no longer come out. Good to know that help is available.
air and light and time and space
for that kind of money, just buy a new PC. You can get one for under $300 now.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
"An initial diagnostics call, for example, could run $99. Cleanup jobs usually run one to two hours, and some franchisees say they charge between $149 and $165 for one hour and $265 to $275 for two hours."
Which is what leads to people spend 300 or 400 bucks on an entirely new machine...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Organized crime has to be behind it all, the deal is too sweet for the repair shops, and too much of a drain on victims. It's like a revolving door, just make sure that the customer at Best Buy never hears of Spybot or Firefox, and you're certain to get another $90 within 2 weeks.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
So this means they will have antoher 1,500 people whose only function is to tell you they have to send your laptop aways for 2 weeks to do a 15 minute harddrive swap???
Madre de Dios! Es El Pollo Diablo! -- Captain Blondebeard
Do yourself a favor and track down the Geek Squads price list. Holy Crap am I in the wrong business (law).
$29.00 to install RAM? Whats that take 5 mins? 60/5= 12, 12 x $29 = $348 an hour. Where do I sign up?
I feel bad for the roaming geeks like Best Buy's Geek Squad.
having to deal with people on the phone is tough. but when you have to go into their homes, that's scary. You lose the safe seperation from people's weirdness.
Although, I always told the joke that people would be a whole lot nicer if they saw me in person. it's easy to be an asshoel to a voice on the phone. But in person, it's a little harder.
Pretty Pictures!
Spyware attacks are on the rise.
Geez, and I feel bad about charging $25/hour for doing side jobs. Mostly just cleaning up spyware, installing software, drivers, new hardware. Maybe I should up my rates . . .
Just as the War on Some Drugs can never be ended because it would "put too many people out of work", so do those opposing free minds and free markets viciously fight against any cracks in the Microsoft monocultural dike. After all, think of those poor buggy whip^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htech support workers. How can they expect to feed their children in the face of secure, stable and reliable systems? You free software people, why do you hate children and America?
Fuck Slashdot
The most hated words on a tech support phone call.. EVER. These same people are going to be very dissappointed when they show up - charge $90 bucks - just to get referred.
I do free lance support - i limit my self to biz only i never go to someones home.. that is asking for problems and people calling you when their 10yearold screws it up..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
If I can buy a Dell for 399, 499 or 599... why would I pay 165 per hour for a service technician? Hell, a data backup and XP reinstall to recover from a virus/spyware infestation could potentially cost more than a cheap, new Dell.
I know for a fact that one of the national big box stores mentioned doesn't have *any* of the thousands of on-site techs in their employment. They subcontract out everything to ComputerRepair.com, which is an interesting business idea in itself. I wrote a tech's perspective review of ComputerRepair.com here.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
my friend has a sony viao laptop.. p4 2.8ghz 512mb ram, real nice system. roughly 4-5 months old. a few of the keys started to pop off. we sent it to best buy, where they "fixed" it. then the k key started to come off and the down key on the arrow pad, and the battery started to not hold a charge, so we sent it back. they started to complain since we brought back the laptop twice.
the tech guy was an idiot. said the battery was bad because we smoke around it. then proceeded to give us a speech about it. what the hell.
computer services you.
& mfr=&search=KWS&orgCategory=&Keyword=installation& Category=-2&MatchExactPhrase=&SubCategory=0&logon= &langid=EN&more=true&page=0&newcategory=20008&sele cteddept=20008&searchresultsdeptlist=-2,20001,2000 2,20004,20008,20006,20003,-3
BestBuy's Geeksquad charges $129.99 canadian to throw RAM in your computer.
Installations:
http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/subclass.asp?catid=
In a previous life, the company I worked for sold both hardware and consulting services. The margin on hardware & shrink-wrapped software was about 3%. The margin on consulting, with the bloated managment overhead and massive cross-country travel costs was still over 30%.
Who would you rather compete against: Dell & eBay or Best Buy's repair desk?
This is no dofferent than with any other industry in the US. Skilled labor is expensive!
-MrLogic
Apparently that is the future economy of this country. We dont make anything any longer, so all that is left is 'services'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is quite annoying. I can't tell you how many times I've had to fix the screw-ups from places like this. They don't hire qualified technicians, nor train them properly. I've had issues where they've left wireless networks wide open and resulted in identity theft, hacked systems, and just about anything else you can think of. Including near completely deleted harddrives due to sharing the C drive or whatnot.
The list can go on and on, but things as blatant as telling a customer "oh yeah, we secured your wireless network" but then not actually doing it....well, that's bad. I've had them replace harddrives that weren't bad, even making the user start from scratch WITHOUT attempting to backup any data.....I better stop now before I start getting angry at this crap....again.
So before we jump on the "just buy a new computer" bandwagon, think about the time and hassle of moving that which makes your computer your computer, your DATA, to that new computer and transferring all of your settings, preferences, bookmarks, etc. Incorporate that time into the overall expense and you'll see that it's not such a great deal to just buy up that new emachines or dell or whatever...
Then factor in the SPOUSE HASSLE FACTOR...God forbid you move some file of your spouses from the old computer to the new one and she can't find it, or things look different on the new computer, etc...
How much does that cost vs. just fixing the problems with your current computer, let alone the environmental cost of recycling or disposing of the old computer. I know that nobody has ever thrown one of those into the dumpster...
Ocean is land, covered with water.
One of Hutcheson's most successful technicians is the former assistant manager for a brake-check franchise. "What I loved about him was the fact that he was taking a $99 brake job and turning into a $300 ticket, and the customer was still happy," he says.
I'm not sure I'd be too happy, especially if this is something that was "liked" by higher-ups. It seems to put the emphasis in the wrong place. How ironic...he starts by indicating how vulnerable he is when it comes to something like plumbing, and then uses that same kind of vulnerability to extract more money from GoC customers.
I've read several posts now, asking "Why not just buy a new computer instead of paying the money for 3 hours of repairs?" I can answer that in one word: DATA.
That new computer won't have the pictures of their child's first birthday, or their honeymoon, which were moved onto the old computer from their digital camera. It won't have the files for Quicken, last year's TurboTax data, or the large MP3 collection. The new computer won't have their email, their resume, or anything else they may have worked on (but not backed up).
Yes, I know, they could just move the data over...well, not necessarily. I helped someone out once, and the computer was SO blown up with spyware that it was actually quite hard to get the data off. The guy had been using spyware-riddled apps of various sorts for so long, and waited so long to do something about the problem, that his system was barely stable enough to stay up, much less transfer data to another PC. He couldn't burn CDs, either. And this is the 'new computer' scenario.
I think a lot of people put up with a good bit of cruft on their systems; by the time they're calling for multi-hundred-dollar support, things have gotten so bad that it's not simple to just step off to another computer and move the data.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
It may take 3 hours of hands-on time to fix a single computer, but five computers can usually be fixed in that same three hours. Much of the "fixing" time is just waiting for disks to be scanned for malware and for installs to run. "Windows is saving your settings" (Ugh.)
The real issue is support costs versus training costs. Businesses that pay $250/hour for someone to "fix their computers" (which is to say, clean up Windows errors) should be paying $100/hour for someone to train their people on how to avoid these problems.
It's not hard to avoid viruses and malware. You switch to a non-IE browser and don't run programs whose originator you don't know. That doesn't take too much training time, but it saves a timeclock full of support time if people practice those things.
Combined with some AV tool (and in my experience it doesn't matter which one), you're generally on target for hassle-free computer use.
sigs, as if you care.
and everything to do with cheap and incompetent oursourcers. They cut training and compensation budgets to hide the initial cost of offshoring (or to just make more money), and the result is that calling telephone tech support is a disaster (a free disaster though). Right now telephone techs fall into two categories: those with a minimum call time and those without. The latter will do everything they can to punt you and the former will jerk you around as long as they can. Sure there are exceptions (I'm working for one now), but they're too few and far between.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I do this type of on-site work and this is the single most common response I get when a customer is trying to talk me down on price, or complain about the cost of his/her repair.
There's an element of truth to it, but generally, it's not nearly as good a solution as it appears.
For starters, most service calls end up being at least partially due to virii and spyware. If the customer buys a new machine, how long do you think it will take him/her to get it just as infected as the previous system was - if he/she does the same types of things he/she did before?
I've actually had customers do this! They ordered a new Dell or bought a new HP at Best Buy rather than "waste money fixing this 4 year old machine" - only to end up calling me 2 months later, asking me to clean up *both* computers.
You can hire a decent whore for that much. And, yes, I speak from experience.
In most cases, the cost of the hardware is trivial in comparison to the value of the data.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Several things I see people saying knocking this diea...however, financially...it is beautiful.
1. Everyone here tells people to go buy a new computer for 300$...yeah thats you slashdot...and me...and your buds in the CS program...however joe six pack bought his computer for 1400$ from dell doesnt know what a motherboard is and thinks linux...well...doesnt EVER fuxxing think about linux
2. There is not as of yet ANY truly branded hardcore computer repair group spanningt the country (cept maybe GeekSquad from best buy but that is stretching it). these people who get there names branded properly are going to do well..
BRANDING this is going to be HUGE...Franchising this out will be well worth it...
3. these guys are AWESOME for tie ins to get into a customers home 9if working busniess contacts and vice versa) to get easy extra business with 1/2 the marketing...if you are good and have osme perosnality and know how to get the computer to kjust work (and add value...free internet software some education during the fixing...) you can do very well
the service industry is what we will all become
negative....as computers get smarter and systems evolve here in teh coming future the long term ability of these people is interesting because computer power may soon be something on tap...plug in a monitor and boom...everyhting u could concieve...
Mad, adj : Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence. Ambrose Bierce - The Deveil's Dictionsary
I'm trying to find their UFOC (Uniform Franchise Offering Circular) online, but unfortunately, the FTC doesn't seem to have these online - as far I can see.
Any FTC IT guys out there? Can you convince them to put the filings online a la "EDGAR"?
Why are "geek squads" rising? Because the quality of telephone tech support has gone down the toilet. People just don't want to talk to someone in Sri Lanka that they can't understand and can't understand them. People don't want to have to walk thru a script of things they've already tried just to make the tech's computer happy.
People want someone who can look at the computer, know what's wrong, and fix it. They don't want to click on X, Y and Z then get Q and try to explain to the person on the other end of the line what they are seeing.
Simply put, to speak to tech support on the phone, you need to be somewhat tech savvy yourself. Then if you're a tech like me, it's frustrating to be led thru all the things you've already tried. ("I've already cleared the printer queue. I've reinstalled the driver. I've replaced the cable. For the fifteenth time, the printer's internal test page doesn't print when I use the front panel buttons!!!")
In business especially, it's not worth the time to spend hours on a tech support call when a phone call to the local computer geek results in same-day service with minimal loss of productivity. Instead of tying up an employee on the phone, that employee can be doing non-computer productive work, which just may pay for the tech's time.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
I couldn't agree more!
That's why I have my own business (www.wyrickconsulting.net) today. The big problem with GeekSquad and the other large "chains" of computer on-site service is not the rates they charge, but the fact that consumers expect an expert on their doorstep for those prices. Instead, they're getting teenagers through 20-30-somethings who are doing it as their "first real conputer job", or people who simply don't care as long as they get their weekly paycheck.
They just make it harder for the knowledgeable consultants to find work, because of the whole "once bitten, twice shy" effect.
As for wireless networks though, I do think there should be some type of disclaimer customers sign on these. I've set up quite a few where I was asked NOT to secure it, because it made it too inconvenient/confusing for their computer illiterate friends (or employees, in the case of a few small businesses) to get their laptops on the network when they came by. I can actually respect that opinion, but I wouldn't want to end up in a lawsuit if something happened down the road and they claimed "the consultant didn't tell me THIS could happen!".
Same reason HD recovery places are in business. At one place I worked, a person lots their drive to a head crash. The data was critical, and of course there was no backup. I think we paid to the effect of $2000 to get it back, and we had to supply our own harddrive for them to put it on.
It would be nice to think people will take appropriate precautions with their data but, much like it would be nice to think people will take care of their body and not eat junk food all the time, it just isn't going to happen.
...and resinstall all of the programs that you have from the original factory disks that are carefully organized on your bookshelf, right? Oh, and somehow copy all of your docs and emails over to the new PC. Oh, and restore all of your settings, preferences, backgrounds, sounds. Sounds like a 10-minute job to me.
I hear tech support can help with all that. What a vicious cycle!
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I used to do this kind of work on the site before/during the dotcom era, and the residential customers were people with fully loaded IBM, Dell, and HP machines. These are people who have a machine that was top of the line when they bought it and it cost at least $2000 (US).
Sure, a $500 Dell might be the same specs as that machine now, but if they were going to just buy a new computer they'd be buying a top of the line machine again and spend $2000+ dollars. So $300 for repair is a small price to pay.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
1,500 more people to tell you what the System Restore CD looks like.
Desktop support is a tough job to get good people into. If you're any good at it on your own, you're probably qualified for a better job. If you need training to do desktop support, you probably advise the system restore CD often. So, long term desktop support guys aren't going to be the good ones, and the people calling the Geek Squad need the best support/handholding possible.
Basically if you're over 40 and suck at using a computer, find a nerd friend to help or give up. I would suggest a book but people think getting good at using computers just happens with no effort or active learning. I mean, I just bought my first Compaq desktop yesterday and I'm already a Sun cluster admin today, WOW!
But then you go to some old gal's house and she's
(That's a compilation, thankfully, not a description of a single person.)
sigs, as if you care.
quickly figures out that the real place to make money is the corporate market and not the home market. With most companies, they aren't behind you with a stop watch to count your time. Also, you normally can get several hours of time in during one stop. You don't have to go all over hell's half acre to make your money. Sure, you can make money that way but it's too much work.
Also, going into people's houses all the time weirds me out. We quit doing that about 4 years ago.
I read an article about Geeks on Call and, while it's an interesting idea, I don't see that they are going to have much success in the corporate market. According to the article, the techs are not supposed to talk to any of their customers on the phone - every problem results in a service call. That might work with joe homeowner but a business that spends several $k a month on your service will expect phone support....
2. There is not as of yet ANY truly branded hardcore computer repair group spanningt the country (cept maybe GeekSquad from best buy but that is stretching it). these people who get there names branded properly are going to do well.. BRANDING this is going to be HUGE...Franchising this out will be well worth it...
You hit the nail on the head with the whole branding thing. When Joe Average's computer breaks, what does he do? Aside from calling his geek brother-in-law first trying to get some free help, he ends up pouring over the Yellow Pages trying to find someone that can repair his computer. He has noooo idea who is good, who works out of the garage, who actually knows what they're doing, etc. All he sees is a bunch of 1/8 page ads, some listings here and there, and it's a big crap shoot for him. But now...now he sees the Geek Squad commercial on TV. He recognizes that logo. He's seen it in magazines. That's where he's going to go. Maybe the time is right to join in...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I've discovered that all of our(US) programmers are taking up jobs as tech support lackeys.
too saturated with workers and the prices plummet?
I've been in IT for going on 8 years and I've seen the rise and fall of the job market. What with outsourcing, I'm seriously thinking about getting the hell out of the industry and into something impossible for the PHBs to outsource.
As our applications inevitably migrate from our computers to the network, the network literally becomes the computer.
This new supercomputer gets faster as bandwidth increases. A completely optical network means bandwidth would approach the speed of light. My computer could use your hardware as seamlessly as mine.
Meanwhile Ray Kurzweils predictions of $1000 of hardware with the processing power of a human brain arising within our lifetimes is also quite conceivable.
These factors, combined with Metcalfe's Law (The power of the network increases exponentially by the number of computers connected to it) all point to an emergent, distributed, networked, increasingly "intelligent" global nervous system.
And we've got front row seats :)
Thoughts on the Emergence of Computing Intelligence
yes it could work, maybe, if you have enough knowledge to know what and how to backup and what not to reinstall afterwards. As this is geared at people that don't mind spending such money for a simple job, I can guarantee you that people using that service don't have those skills.
But it is a stiff fee nonetheless.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Around here, most people charge $40-$75 per hour for general computer repair. I charge $40 as a temporary rate (going up to $50 in Sept). Business networking support is available at a higher rate.
Most jobs take 1-2 hours (min 1 billable hr anyway).
It is quite possible to hire decent technicians and pay them enough that you can made a decent profit on a $40/hr service call here. Maybe the rate is different where office space is expensive, etc.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
i'll believe it when i see it. besides, this is nonsense. computers can't possibly get that much easier to use. it goes against the theoreticall limits. if you want to do complex things, then you have to write long, complex programs that have lots of bugs. otherwise the halting problem would be solvable. contradiction, cause it's not.
I expect that I'll be an old man before this happens. The connectivity just isn't here on the WAN side. All of the companies who banked on an explosion of bandwidth are now or will shortly be bankrupt. I think that you'd have to have fibre connections to make this work. Cable connections are probably fast enough but most of them are seriously flakey. The ILEC's have no reason to spend money to upgrade network connections to fibre.
Inside of a company on a local area net, sure.
I think it is a great idea but don't see where the financial incentives are and without those, it ain't going to happen. As it stands now, it's a nightmare just to get a DSL connection installed let alone fixed. Image how much more difficult this would be with fibre or wireless......
I don't mean to be a troll, but Apple makes this easy. I'm a professional Macintosh programmer and I have mac's all over house. I just replaced the kids eMac with another eMac and was happy to see the "transfer files" option. I just booted my old computer in firewire disk mode, plugged it into the new one, and pressed go. All user accounts, all printer settings, all network settings etc just came over. It turned a real PITA job into a "drink beer and watch the Red Sox" job.
I'm pretty sure that Apple will do this for you at their stores, and for all I know, they'll do it for your Windows machine either.
Yes, T/S is a joke. I wasted much time and energy with Sonicwall's (ahem...) support over this last weekend. Then I realized the problem was that the firmware I installed on the fw was corrupt...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
just what I wanted to do was to go into some strangers house and work on their windoze computer.
where do I sign up.
How do you guys operate when you are doing tech support jobs for family, friends, or strangers? How much do you charge? Do you have written-down procedures for removing spyware, installing an OS, etc.? How do you advertise? What materials do you use? Do you back people's data up for them?
Just a thought related to this article.
More like profesional apologizers.
.. and it's not their fault.
Technicians -- especially the good ones -- are not going to do well at this
It's the fault of the companies who prohibit their engineers and support people from giving out good, useable, technical information anymore.
It's the fault of the manufacturers, who often don't know what's in their products because it's sub-contracted through 90 different companies.
It's the fault of the marketers, who claim that everything works 100%, perfectly, without-a-doubt, with one hand behind your back.
It's the fault of the customers who look at a $299.99 PC and think that all of their problems will go away and no new ones will appear with the signing of a check.
It's the fault of the hiring agents who pay a person with 30 years of technical experience the same as someone who read an A+ manual.
It's the fault of the big box stores who would desperately prefer to move merchandise rather than repair something.
And it's the fault of the buying public who believe you can have all three: high-quality, free quality technicians, and low-cost.
I just know it ain't Barry White's fault.
But, please, please, more spyware, more shoddy workmanship! Everyone at the trough! Dig in. Face first, please.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Funny, I've been looking for quality standards for on-site service techs for about a week now, and haven't found ahything useful.
OK, something breaks, somone calls someone else, someone shows up and maybe fixes it. What makes a good on-site technician? What do customers expect from a good on-site technician? What distinguishes an excellent tech from the average tech? Where can I find the answers to these questions?
Now, think about the tech business: It costs a certain amount of money to live these days. Your tech needs $750/week to support his wife and family. In order to pay him $750/wk your business has to receive $2250 in revenues from his weekly business. There is only about 20 hours of billable tech time available in a week, the rest of it is taken up by travel, errands, sickness, vacations, delays from missing parts or customer rescheduling, etc., therefore your business has to charge about $112/hr in order to break even. If you have a lousy tech, he could cost you the business of someone who can afford to pay over $100/hr for a good tech. Where are those standards, again?
By the way, those figures are not made up. I transposed them from a National Office Machine Dealer's presentation I went to about 15 years ago concerning making service a profitable activity instead of a money sink. NOMDA merged with LANDA (Local Area Network Dealer's Association). If anyone knows the name of the subsequent organization, they may have some good information on standards.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I feel sorry that people trust someone who just runs a virus scanner and adware removal tool on a compromised system to render their system secure again. The initial security breach that uses a remote exploit of a system service or some userland program offering its services to the internet and then either the admin/poweruser rights or a local exploit for privilege escalation, is an indication of a system compromise. A virus infection may or may not be related to the presence of other malware, but when securing a system it's safe only to assume the worst, a secondary infection by undetected malware and that all passwords and other sensitive information on the computer has been leaked. A data backup and rebuilding the system from a clean media is the only acceptable cleanup procedure in most cases. It must be accompanied by changing the passwords of all services that have been accessed via the compromised system.
- Learn how to care for your PC
- Pay $$$ to have someone take care of your PC
- Don't get a PC
A PC for under $300? You can't get something for (next to) nothing.Currently bidding on sig
As a previous franchise manager for Geeks on Call; their profit margins are skinny. As an owner you are looking at zero profit in the first two years.
Everyone says it takes money to make money, well here you are spending all your money and making the franchise all the money. Oh, and your base mark up for hardware is 19% over actual cost, and that belongs to Geeks on call. All the money is made from actual labor, and even that margin is skinnier then 30%. At that point people are paying compusa prices or higher for your product. The franchise itself should be allowing for more leeway, by lowering franchise fees. It was common practice for people to start rolling that hardware into the labor to get away from that 19% mark up in hardware.
I'd say after 4 years of their buisness plan (pyramid scheme) you'd be making about the same as you would any other help desk job, except you'd be cold calling. Yes, that's right: Their buisness plan calls for door to door cold calling (solicitation). I preferred the more refined method of buisness networking through local chambers of commerce. Which kept me from feeling like a complete spammer.
In the end, the franchise ran out of money in 2.5 years thanks to my predecessor blowing through the investors capital. The franchise has a very small window of success, and I don't feel like it was the investors fault for hiring a retard prior to me. My job was bleak, and while we floated for another 1.5 years and generated actual contracts, the money wore out and paychecks started bouncing.
If you marry a geek, you don't have to worry about explaining every little thing. The downside is that when you do mess up, she knows it was your fault.
I do part-time tech support / trainign in my off time from my fulltime job, as I'm sure many /. readers also do.
Geek Squad et al do a wonderful job marketing their services, and BestBuy slaps a "Authorized for Geek Squad Installation" sticker on practically anything that can be used near a computer. They thereby get the Joe and Janes of the world to pay steep charges for simple installation of gizmos and peripherals, virus removal etc.
And it's quite simply: Brilliant
I have made my pricing significantly lower than Geek Squad (the only real, read:advertising, competitor in my city), but high enough that in 3 hours of work, I can make more than a full day at my full time job.
All this and I have a steady flow of new customers. People fear technology: just ask the lady I'm teaching to scan her photos in, write word documents, send email, and use the web. $55/hr to teach stuff I can do in my sleep, and they think it's a bargain!
Fact of the matter: it is a bargain, compared to a community college course, or having Geek Squad do a house call to upgrade / get rid of malware / etc.
A lot of people like the little guy, too and would rather pay an independant guy... clip-on tie and black and white Beetle or not.
I'm too lazy to enter a sig. Hey wait a second! You tricked me!
The deductibility of the expense of the car, isn't some magic that makes it free. It just means that, as with the cost of the phones and the paper and all the other stuff a businss uses, the dollars spent on those things are not profit, and thus are not taxed.
Computer vendors have successfully gotten out of the support biz by doing a terrible job. Now that support costs are minimal, by paying peanuts and getting monkeys, they're able to lower prices to minimal levels. Support is a risky business, because costs can rise manifold unexpectedly, while prices are best when fixed, to preserve the customer relationship. But the support people get to keep that close customer relationship, effectively discarded by the computer vendor.
Expect that the next step, once "trusted brands" are established in "outsourced support", will be sales efforts to support customers, which subsidize cost spikes. And then expect computer retailers to try to get back into that business, by buying up support to "bundle" it. Meanwhile, the consumers will never be sure who we'll be calling during the 3-5 year lifetime of the computer, our ticket to tech support hell.
--
make install -not war
and I say Oxy that Moron.
You can't handle the truth.
Don't bother to RTFA, it's basically a press release for Geek Squad :) I've been doing this type of work for 3+ years. I find that most customers are paying for the convenience factor. 2-3 hours billable to resolve the issue fast is far less costly to them than distracting themselves from their primary job for ?? hours or days to resolve it themselves. By analogy, I can do my own accounting, but paying my accountant 1 hour to do a project correctly is less expensive than taking me away from working 2-3 billable hours for my customers.
That and you're not allowed to pee on them, that costs extra. Prudes.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Usually when someone wants me to fix their computer, if it's an even moderate problem that could indicate it needs a good reinstall, I juse say "Where's your System restore disc?", and use that (Backing stuff up if necessary, but I've noticed most don't really have anything to back up). I wonder how often they do this when they charge so much for their services?
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I have a friend of a friend who got hired there, you couldn't pay me to trust him to touch any computer I had to deal with. Geek Squad is overpriced and seems to have stupid hiring practices. A friend of mine applied there and didn't even get an interview but he's one of the best technicians I've ever met and has great customer service skills.
I do tech support professionally on a college campus and freelance for anyone recommended to me by friends. I hate freelancing because tech support crap is almost always boring and I already do it all day long, but it's hard to turn down extra income. I started out charging $20 an hour, now I'm up to $50 (for on-site calls). I always feel really guilty charging that much though (unless it's a nasty spyware infection). This one time I worked on this guys computer that had had the wireless card disabled - I literally just had to click "enable" and I was done. It took 5 minutes to drive to his house, 5 minutes to get situated with the computer booted up and all that, and then I was done. I told him because it took such a short amount of time I would only charge him $10, he was cool and joked that he pays the kid down the street more to mow his lawn and ended up paying me $30. I still felt bad - clearly I'm not cut out for this kind of work.
Right now I'm working on a PC in exchange for free food, mostly because it's a new customer and I know she is a good cook, but also because all I have to do is swap a CD-ROM drive and troubleshoot a Wacom tablet. I feel like an ass charging for simple things like that.
I work for an indipendent "geeks-on-call" type service.
Our offices is just across the street from a high school The kids love to walk in and ask if we are a "real" company.
I got fed up one time with a bunch of female 12 graders laughing and giggling with each other till one got up the verve to *ask the question*.
Girl: "What is [rent-a-geek]?"
Me (in my best husky tone) : "Why little lady, we are a geek escourt service. What sort of "services" might you be interested in?"
She turned bight red, and all her friends started laughing at her.
I have been doing a lot of work recently with http://www.findacomputerguy.com/ and four of my calls have been where the people have purchased a new computer and just wanted the data moved to the new computer from the old one. They don't care about the $300.00 that is charged, they just want to make certian that their data is intact.
/. are types that would never need this service.
A lot of you guys could sign up here and make some spare money, I have worked for them over the past two months and have made about $2,500.00 just working weekends and after hours class.
Understand that MOST of the people that read
His salary 30K.
...we're going to end up on the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet B Ship?
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
Is one reason why Microsoft products suck so badly. Look at the relationship between the people who employ and profit from growth of tech support, and the people who market or purchase computers. Not only BestBuy and CompUSA, but corporate CIO/IT infrastructures prosper through the proliferation of headcount and costs associated with maintaining crapware.
dave
Now all the g33ks who just gradded can get a job paying $10 an hr doing stuff they learned in 2 courses of uni.
Can't complain bout offshoring now.. look at all these tech jobs being created...
For about $50 you can get a full featured relocator software package that will automatically transfer all your settings, documents, bookmarks, and even INSTALLED PROGRAMS. I used AlohaBob's Ultra Control Pc Relocator on about 30 machines and for most computers, the transfer takes 15 minutes to an hour. As an added benefit, the program scans the hard drive and doesn't transfer malware to the new machine.
In other words, you can buy a $300 Dell and a relocator package for $50 and avoid the trip to Best Buy to get your spyware removed.
Me too, that's why I pick a rate and charge a 1 hour minimum.
My rates are CHEAP too and they know in advance.
No more guilt trips for me.
Nothing wrong with bartering either. Bartering has worked out VERY well for me in a few instances....
I like microcars
You have to be fucking kidding me. No, really. Think again: replaced software engineers who have tons of experience are forced to find themselves in basically level 1 tech suppor role. Travelling to customers' sites in a funny car is not what I consider to be a career. A marketing equivalent of Geek Squad is telling a VP of marketing department to work a a local Gap.
I agree that technical support is on the rise, but I would highly argue against making a career through an at-home service. What the fuck are you? A maid?. If you really want to make a good buck on support, try getting into B2B environments and work with integrators, high level support of enterprise software, etc. Help desk support is "help desk" no matter where it is located and how it is done.
If you have people skills and like technology, why not switch to pre-sales engineering? Pays better and you don't have to have "Geek" in the name of your company.
You can actually work out the statistics of supporting a network of machines. It's a pain to do manually but the binomial probability can be calculated for any particular configuration of machines, applications etc. Your issue management system could do it using real probabilities if you're categorising your support calls adequately. Most aren't remotely that sophisticated though because most IT managers are not remotely that sophisticated.
Once you have the probabilites you can work out how many hours you're going to have to spend supporting the environment, and therefore how many people you'll need and how much it'll cost you. Oddly enough, support now costs more than most hardware and software costs combined.
Turns out. A machine on every desk is about the worst possible configuration, it's particularly bad in peer to peer mode. Replacing peer to peer with client/server is orders of magnitude better but still crap compared to the best. Guess what the best configuration for reducing support headaches is? Mainframe. Or at least, minimising the numbers of systems minimises the support costs.
This is important because, I.T. is now seen as a (necessary) business cost to be minimised and not much more and that is a direct result of the machine on every desk architecture we all use.
If you work in I.T. and would rather be seen as a business service which adds value to the business than simply as a business cost to be minimised (read as outsourced) you might want to take a long hard look at the network architecture of the systems you're using.
Deleted
I don't know where to start. The average post in this thread shows no thought or else the poster is not very experienced in the business world.
/.er. What do you all do? Throw a bare XP box on the network and call it good. The out of the box setup is full of extraneous fluff they don't want and doesn't have the essential stuff they need to do their work.
I do tech. sysadmin, and network engineering work for SMB and local government. I've done it for twenty years. I charge $120/hr. While I often recommend my clients buy a new PC when their old ones break, I still get paid, to set it up on a network, clean up the dumb factory default installations, install the company load, transfer the data from the old to the new and partition and image the new drive.
It is just sensible that if they are going to spend a sizable fraction of that amount to fix the old one (three years or more old), that they consider replacing it now. But replacing it doesn't alleviate the cost of tech. Buying a $300-500 PC does save these costs, it just saves wasting the money on an old piece of crap PC. The PC is a tool for business and its value should be far more than the $3-500 box price.
I'm beginning to wonder about the average
MC
Blah blah blah self-rightious Mac fanatic blah blah.
"Firstly, that if you are buying a new computer,you are going to need all that stuff with a Windows machine anyway, so just buck up and buy the Mac and save yourself a lot of trouble"
And if the software you need to run is only available on a PC?
And how much are they paying these guys 12.00 hr may be 15.00 hr for supervisor while they are charge 250.00 to replace a stick of RAM. Come on
Not "The only down side"
There is also legal liability, especially if you do house calls.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
At large companies blind service calls are the norm. When a copier, fax, printer, or other appliance breaks, no one troubleshoots over the phone. A service call is placed ("Printer jams frequently."), a technician eventually shows up, eventually fixes the problem. Many hours, perhaps multiple visits...it is definately a lucrative deal for the repair house.
Why should commoditized desktop PCs be handled any differently? No one has time to waste on details. Better to spend extra dollars than waste part of an eight-hour day on trivial matters.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Ok, so where to begin? I work for GeekSquad as a Double Agent.(I do the In-Home Stuff) Obviously there are more desirable jobs out there, but givin my location I do pretty well. You can make fun of it, talk about how you feel that it's wrong to charge so much, pretend that no one needs it, but the truth is that demand is enormous. It's not like we are targeting these individuals, they come to us. All we do is offer this service based on lifestyle questions and then we let them decide. On top of that BestBuy is totally non-commission. We could care less if you buy it or not, on a personal level that is, so we don't rip people off. If it sounds too costly to you, or if you feel that it wouldn't be beneficial, then don't buy it. Simple. Now, lets compare GeekSquad to everything else. I have fixed thousands of computers. Our focus is to restore as little as possible. Time/cost is always a factor here though, especially when on-site. The customers time is very important in this decision too. Personally, I have yet to restore a single system on-site, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't. Thats with Hundreds of Service calls under my belt. Obviously each Agent will be different. It isn't a perfect world afterall. These agents are generally left as instore techs until weeded out. We charge a FlatRate. "It will Cost X amount. Would you like an agent to come out?" If im there for 10 hours the price will stay the same. Compare $159-229 to $50/h when your there for 10 hours. Obviously that doesn't happen very often, but that is how we handle it. Averagely each call is about 3 hours. Our goal is to be in and out asap but we will be there as long as it takes. Can the hourly people say that? Anyway... What im getting at is that GeekSquad offers the best solution. It's the struggling local people who will rip you off not Geeksquad. We have Branding, people know who we are! They come to us in such masses that sheer quantity outweighs trying to milk each individual Service Call. To top that, GeekSquad Agents do not receive the revenue but are PAID by the hour. An individual Agent is available 40 hours a week. Plus we are backed by an organization that isn't going away any time soon. Geeksquad is truely the best option for any consumer. Our mission is to take care of the customers needs, not to sell them things, for the sake of money, that they don't need. We call this Organic Growth. We grow through our existing Customer Base in this way. They will come back and see us again because they received a high-Quality level of service. People love that! Obviously, there will be some jaded consumers. It happens but the majority of shoppers @ BestBuy will have a much better experience then they would anywhere else. Lol, all that and I bet most people will never even read it. :P
Don't you mean the 3.5" credit card entry point?
"An initial diagnostics call, for example, could run $99. Cleanup jobs usually run one to two hours, and some franchisees say they charge between $149 and $165 for one hour and $265 to $275 for two hours."
You'd have to be Paris Hilton to pay these rates as a home user. Even small business users might squawk.
It's highway robbery. It's extortion to charge those rates.
Now you know why most people just wipe the machine and reinstall when there's a problem. Who wants to wait on the phone for two hours on a call to the manufacturer or pay these ridiculous rates to some geek?
My trojan cleaning client of the other day ended up paying $175 for nearly 16 hours of my time - mostly because I wasn't very efficient and my tools were not totally adequate. And I hate charging a client for a half-done job because I was too inefficient to finish it before they run out of money.
Now, if it was a small business user, I would have charged $35/hour, and probably just backed off their data, reinstalled the OS and apps, and been done in three hours or so, because they would have had the CDs and could afford to do it that way.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
...for charging people $35/hr to fix elementary problems. Until I read about places like Geek Squad who send you a cookie-cutter tech with only limited troubleshooting skills, yet charge $150/hr or more!
Nowawadays my guilt is gone. I can't vouch for other people, but _I_ know _I'm_ a good tech. I don't need to know much about your software or hardware to be of use. 15 years of experience with PCs and good critical thinking skills give me everything I need to solve my customers' problems in less time than the "pros," and usually with better results. Even with my 1 hour minimum, I'm still saving Grandma 300% over what one of these places would charge her, and I'm doing a better job than them to boot.
Realize that you have an immense body of context and experience, which lets you think of replacing an optical drive or repairing a broken Office install as "simple." By the same token, the master mechanic can put your car on a lift in his garage and declare that your engine swap will be a piece of cake -- he's done it dozens of times before! But to you, the engine swap is an almost insurmountable task.
Your skill, and hence your labor, has a high market value. Even at $50/hr, you're selling your labor at a discount! You should be proud of yourself for offering a superior service at a very competitive price.
So not to be too off topic but why such a condescending & derogatory name? 'Geek Squad'?
Rise of support services? Wasn't that what they called it the last time around when it was 'call centers'. I wonder how long this will last.
Instead of joining geek squad or some other tech support firm, do it yourself. Create a company, do your own advertising, and do all the tech support work yourself. You could have a base fee of billable hours ($50-100 an hour), plus travel expenses (dependent on distance & appointment time), and you'd still be lower than the cost of a someone from best buys.
Plus you keep all the profits, with the only loss being the wear on your car (which you could probably write off as a business expense).
The best part is you gain contacts and a reputation. Chances are some of these people own their own companies, and might hire you at a higher salary to do some work for them.
Well, the first thing I'd do is call your local competitors up on the phone, pretending to be a customer, and see what they're charging and how they bill. When I did that, I found out a few creative little "twists" to how some firms bill for system repairs. For example, some places claim to charge "flat repair rates" - but actually end up being more costly than firms billing by the hour plus parts. Sometimes, they do such things as billing fixed prices for every piece of the PC they have to remove and replace during a repair job. So if you have, say, an HP Pavilion that needs a RAM upgrade - they might charge $40 "flat rate for power supply removal/installation" because it had to come out to get to the memory slots!
It's good to know such things before going into the business, so at the very least, you can properly inform some people who falsely believe competitor X is far cheaper than you....
I currently charge $60/hr. with a 1 hour minimum, and additional time billed in 20 minute increments. I don't charge any extra travel or trip charges. Most of my competitors bill upwards of $79/hr. and do include some type of travel charge. I live in a major city though... your findings may vary based on location.
The people who think these rates are "extremely high" really don't have a good concept of the costs of doing business. For starters, a basic Yellow Pages ad will easily cost you upwards of $400 per month. If you don't have one of these, you aren't going to really be competing effectively at all in the marketplace. (When "Average Joe" needs his PC fixed, he looks in his phone book to find someone - more often than not.)
Of course, if you're only doing this part-time, maybe you only plan on "word of mouth" referrals or flyers in mailboxes or whatever. That's fine too, but don't forget your costs for gas, oil changes, tires, and other vehicle maintenance for driving around to these calls. Also, you'll need to keep some sort of basic inventory of parts with you. I always try to keep at least 2 256MB PC-133 memory sticks, 2 PC-2700 256MB memory sticks, a DVD writer, a CD writer, a spare AMD Athlon XP motherboard and CPU, an extra ATX power supply, a 3.5" floppy drive, and spare PS/2 keyboard and mouse, along with a Linksys wi-fi router and a spare cable modem. (I was surprised how often I ran into problems with internet connectivity that ended up being the fault of a defective cable modem. It's not a HUGE issue, but I saw it a good 3 or 4 times. It was worth keeping a spare with me for troubleshooting purposes, at least.)
This is why most windows techs are adamant about not giving people a choice. If most of their "clients" were on Linux, their bloodline of "spyware and virus" infestations woudl be cut and they would have to develop real skills.
I can't tell you how many times I have wanted to intervene -and sometimes I do- when a CompUSA "tech" is lying through his teeth to some guy. He is not just abusing this guy's trust, but damaging the reputation of anyone who works in IT as in the end we are all painted with the same brush.
That's what's going on here, my friends.
Fight the Best Buy, CompUSA clueless crowd with all you got!
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
Caller: A cable came out of my computer and i dont know what hole to put it back into.
Support: I can help you with that, will that be VISA or MUSTARD CARD?
If people are willing to pay that amount for PC repairs, then brilliant - easy money. I can use it to finance areas of development i want to work in.
Anyway repairing a PC is better for the environment
I wouldn't call paying $2-300 to fix a $2,000 machine a small price to pay - especially when it's spyware problems that will crop up again in a month. That's like paying $2,000 a month to fix a $15,000 car.
Paying ten to twenty-five percent of my machine every couple of months is ridiculous.
That's why I buy my printer cartridges for my Epson Stylus C60 from PrintPal.com - $6 for black, $7 for color, instead of $30-35 for the Epson cartridges.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Thats ridiculus.
:P
:P
There are plenty of GeekSquad Agents that support Linux. We just don't support it that often at the consumer level. Most linux users don't need a Geek to come help because they are geeks themselves, at the consumer level anyway, but not in every case of course.
We support it mostly at the Bussiness level. It's usually a Job for Special Agents.
GeekSquad can handle any Business/consumers needs. From Small to Large....
Yeah, I agree about the CompUSA guys though. Dumb F*** Twits.
So, you don't think that if everyone was using linux that there wouldn't be some other form of Spyware infecting linux computers? Your joking right? Windows is always the target because most of the world is using it. Thats it.
Just a pointless PotShot really, but feel free to make as many of those as you like at CompUSA.
lol...
I don't know, thats not much different than the AC guy charged to come out and fix our central air. And he had to come out twice, charging that much each time (one hour). I don't know how much central air costs, but I also don't know anyone who actually buys the $300 computers. I usually see ~$1000 for a computer. I do know that the furnace repair people charge the same amount, and our furnace also cost about $1000.
So why is it robbery for computer repair men to charge that, when it's ok for plumbers, Heating/AC people etc...?
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Actually getting tipped by your customers. I charge a flat fee (may have to stop that, but am building customer base now), and apparantly do a good job of making them confident of my skills.
:-)
My first customer was a dream - she made me lunch, even
I am a science fantasy fan
Having worked at a friend's computer shop for the past year, I've made some observations about "support service" businesses.
Thankfully, I've worked at an honest place where our main goal is to give the customer exactly what he/she needs, nothing more, nothing less. Our customers realize this and appreciate it, that's why we've remained in business longer than any other shop in town. Our main competition is with a rival shop with a much different goal. I can speak from experience that a person will almost always go to a shop that has a fancy sign or whichever is listed first in the yellow pages. So what ends up happening is a customer will buy a $700 system from "ABC Computers", and once this customer tries "ABC Computers" to get support for their new system, they'll often turn to us for support, even if it's still under warranty. This can be a good and a bad thing; they'll often be steamed at "ABC Computers" and will tend to be huffy at us. But once we're able to do our thing and take the time to expalin to them what we did to fix the problem and how they can prevent it from happening again, we will have another loyal customer.
It always makes me angry when a customer tells me what happened when they took their system to "ABC Computer" and I can tell that they've been hosed-over. One time I got a customer that complained that an RMA'd motherboard had slower RAM than the one that was replaced. I knew right away that this other shop had sold him PC2100 RAM, told him it was PC2700 and simply overclocked it.
We realize that it's difficult to get a good reputation through word-of-mouth and easy to get a bad rep. Sure, we're not going to be a massive support company by only charging for the work we do (I would never DREAM of charging a customer 3 hours at a rate of $40/hr to do a backup, format, and O.S. install when I know that in reality I'm actually working on it for 2 hours), but that's not what we're trying to accomplish. We want to provide a great service and great products all at a reasonable price. If we stay true to this goal, there's no reason why we couldn't be in business for another 20+ years.
And yes, they are all separate sites - we are an organization of departments, with little or no coordination.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
you can use your own cablemodem?!
here in the uk cablemodems are supplied by the isp and i don't think you can use your own.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You have a skill that these people desperately need, don't be afraid to charge them enough to make it worth your while to do the work.
If someone buys a cheap shit computer using a Godawful, unsecure OS, they don't care to maintain it and don't take any precautions against it getting owned (like not opening every URL and attachment that appears in their inbox, for example), then they deserve what they get. If they can't afford your services, they'll either put up with the spyware, viruses, worms, slow performance and crashes, or they'll learn to take care of their own friggin' computer.
When I freelance, I charge $50/hour to home users, and $85/hour to businesses. Everyone's billed a minimum of one hour, and after that I bill in 15-minute increments. Friends get off a little easier, I usually just have them pick one or two things off my Amazon wish list for each hour I work on their stuff, or we work out some other deal.
Coming from the Geeks On Call side I have to say that it is interesting to see all the posts that have come through on the boards here today. Granted my views may be a little bit skewed, but still I figured I should share with the /. crowd.
First note, I've worked with Geeks On Call for almost two years now. I thankfully happen to be employed by the largest and most successful franchise in the company, so maybe I have it a bit easier than most, but overall I have had a very good run with this company.
Personally, I can not say enough good things about most of the little guys that I have met out there in the field. Sure there are some that couldn't find the start button on an XP box, but for the most part many of the independents I have met are quite knowledgable. The in-home/office support market is a big freaking pond, so let everyone get in a play for godsakes.
As for the Geek Squad, well, I enjoy going to Best Buy stores just to give them a hard time. Heard a lot of horror stories, but never seen anything first hand, so I really can't comment. Although somehow I really doubt they pay anywhere near what I would need to survive on. ie. You get what you pay for.
Personally I can't see making any excuses for our pricing. Our prices are our prices, and people are paying it (we have over 20% of our calls for repeat customers). So obviously there is a market for what we do at our rates. If the market changes, we will reevaluate the environment and adjust as needed. We have 15 techs in the field and had 31 calls today.
Before you say we are just spyware monkey's a few stats:
- We have one primary Mac tech (more than 60% of his stuff is Mac) and four other techs that will take Mac calls.
- We have multiple clients for whom we have setup various site to site IPsec VPNs for, including a couple that have secondary AD controllers at the remote locations.
- I've got a Debian box sitting right next to me right now that I'm configuring postfix on. Customer is going to be running all the email for their field technicians through it.
- We just setup our own Asterisk box at the office. And yes, it is in production.
- Next week I am flying to Orlando, Florida and Columbus, Ohio to setup a customers remote offices.
Anyway, point is, we are not spyware monkey's. Well, at least not the Geeks in Baltimore. =DNow, off to drink more beer.
-Scott
So, if you think it's going to take 3 hours to fix, just go out and buy a new computer
Let's consider probabilities, namely the probability of requiring much expert help given a problem. This probability is high enough that either a straight hardware swap or a ghost image is the most cost effective solution.
Better yet, every computer should come with a full complement of applications installed and preconfigured to run. By definition this system would include backup software so if there is any major problem you can recover from the recovery disk and restore all data.
Businesses are willing to pay fairly large sums for hassle-free computing.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
You need AC and heating more than you need a PC - unless of course you make the money by which you pay for your AC and heating by using the PC - which most people don't. The same applies to car repair.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I have read alot of posts on here about techs not wanting to charge .
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a rate that they feel is too high
Most feel the rate is too high because when the plumber shows
up and bills them for $60 - $90 for a ball of hair in their pipes
They cringe at the cost
We are a new generation, the freelance small biz and home computer
support ppl did not exist 20 years ago as it does today
If you are certified/qualified, and do good work, and the ppl you
have done work for are very happy and fixed and informed of spyware
and virii after you leave you are worth as much as the the turd
herder, and the guy that runs 3 copper wires from a switchbox
to a outlet
If you wanna charge less that is your issue, but I feel I should
have a car that gets me to work reliably, not a porsche mind you.
I feel I should have a place to live I can call home
I feel I should be able to support, cloth, feed my family
Price beyond that and your dabbling in the "noveau liberal rich"
ie. progressive taxation on ppl that make more than poverty wages
A PC tech billing $50 an hour is not gonna get rich,
and he is going to have expenses, and he is going to spend
1/4 to 1/3 his time chasing paper work, doing taxes, doing
invoices answering phone calls that don't pan out for any
profit
I wish them well, it is what I do every day and I don't want to work
for the corporate sled dog, rat race, two faced, stock price
obsessed, freakazoids ever again
You do not want to see what a "good" lawyer charges, and you
do not want to see what a type flight accountant charges either
If your that good, you can and should charge "that" much
Alot of other ppl are willing and able to bill you for MUCH more
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Yes, here in the US we can use our own; cable modems typically run $60 or so at Best Buy. Almost every week they also run a promotion where you can get a free one after rebates if you are a new subscriber to a cable internet service. On the other hand, I know that when I ran Charter I had to register my modem's MAC address, so I'm not sure how a spare would really help you unless you were willing to change it over every time there was an issue.
Hey, can I bum a sig?
You experience is worth something. If it wasn't, the dude who hired you would have just checked the fucking box himself and been done with it.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent