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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.""
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 ----
I'm not sure if you're just bitter about the concept of on-site service as a whole or what, but under the assumption you're not simply trolling - I'll go ahead and respond....
1. My rates happen to be lower than anyone else I've called in the entire Yellow Pages under "on-site PC service". I do think many places charge too much for too little, so I'm trying to make a living while still being reasonable.
2. I do both PC and Mac service, and countless times, have suggested the Macintosh alternative to people when they seem to repeatly be struggling with spyware and virus issues. Nonetheless, it's no big secret that ALL on-site PC service businesses handle more virus and spyware calls than any other single type of call today. Even Dell estimates that about 40% of their incoming support calls are about these problems. If I had my way, I'd much rather spend my time solving an interesting system problem or performing an upgrade which leaves a customer with a system that works better than it ever did before. But reality is, they usually call about the virus and spyware problems.
3. Having over 12 years of experience in the computer field, I wouldn't label myself a "high tech janitor", any more than I'd call a software developer wih 10+ years of experience a "digital assembly line worker, shoving bits around all day". But you can create whatever types of labels you wish for a person's line of work. Oversimplify enough, and you can make anyone look bad.
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.