FAQs
- What should the customer know about your pricing (e.g., discounts, fees)?
Often I do not like to give quotes to people who self diagnose their problems with computers. That's my job. If I were to call a Doctor and told him that I have adrenocortical carcinoma and that I don't want to pay to have it diagnosed because I found that I have 6 of 7 symptoms found on Mayo clinic's website, would he say, "let's just start treatment and I'll bill you for chemo". All my work I do overnight, my lab is at home, most of my tools are as well. Because I work full time with a long commute, I don't have time for many after work jobs. Typically I charge $80 for the first hour to troubleshoot. If I can resolve the issue in the hour then I do not add for extra time. Any time after the hour I charge in increments of 30 min at $25 ($50 an hour). There are some fixed rate work, definite virus scans are $120. They take a lot of time to run. Best way to do it is removing the drive and cleaning in a dock in a lab area. For me I do them overnight because I work in the day. Data recovery on broken machines can be done most times. Heavily damaged drives I can only refer clients to a data recovery service. That can be determined pretty easily. If I can provide the service, I will give the cost of the medium to move data to and charge up to $100 for the service. Encrypted drives may cost more. Because I take my work home I charge $20 service charge for round trip pickup and delivery. I waive the fee if the work it dropped off to me.I provide invoices for all work and service. Parts I get for jobs I get through various outlets. Costs for parts need to be paid by the client.
- What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?
Besides self study, My full time job provides me with what I need to know about End User Support. I work full time Helpdesk and desktop support, and then when I get out of work I hope to do some more!
- How did you get started doing this type of work?
This is also my favorite story! My dad had bought a computer when I was maybe in 3rd or 4th grade from RadioShack. It was a Tandy 1000 and I remember it didn't even have Windows on it. It had some fun functions, a word document that we used to write papers and a ribbon printer. Crappy games too. I remember my dad spent a lot of money on it. When I was in 6th grade someone gave me Windows 3.1 because he was upgrading to Windows 95. So I put that in my dad's computer and tried to upload it. It must've took an hour to get to the 3rd disk when the computer started smoking and I think it may have caught fire! I told myself I wouldn't ever break a computer again. And I've been fixing them and building them ever since I got to high school. There was a gap there, after I broke that computer we didn't have another until my freshman year of high school.