The one thing that GS has that nobody else can touch is the "brand."
Most customers (lemmings) feel safer dealing with a big name company
rather than Joe Blow Computer the sole proprietorship. It gives
customers a sense of security in that they have a large company to hold
accountable when there are problems.
In addition, GS members are also insured & bonded. How many local techs
can say the same?
So that's likely why the price is higher.
warpmedia wrote:
I think you're all missing the point that GS represents the state of the
repair business vs. the cost of today's PC's.
They're charging a set fee (and insane one) and getting it for REPEATED
bad work on a daily basis. So yes, those of you charging less or feeling
you need to give a customer a break are ripping yourselves off.
If they came out and decided it would take several hours to clean a
system they would simply say it's more economically sound to re-format &
reinstall the system (which it it is). Then they would charge you $90 to
back up (& restore?) the data on top of that. No hourly rate, just a
comodtized fee for a service. Need apps reinstalled, same deal, a fee
per-app.
I'd say were going the direction of car repair where there is a set time
& fee allotted to a task and if you can get it done faster, the more
profit in your pocket. This should be fine by us all since it free us
from multi-hour surgeries & potentially huge charges to the customer, it
also justifies charging "market value" per incident.
Chris Reeves wrote:
There is a fundamental difference between doing it in a shop and at their
local. If we do it at a shop, we have tons of techs who can work on
10+ PCs
at once with multiple benches setup. So cost to us is less, cost to the
customer is less.
If I (or anyone) has to go to them, we are -only- working on that 1 PC at
that time, we have a cost of gas involved, time traveled involved,
other PCs
not being worked on, etc. so the minimum is really a per hour, it's
the only
way to calculate revenue lost vs. revenue made to make it worth it.
CW
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thane
Sherrington
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 7:51 AM
To: The Hardware List
Subject: RE: [H] Disposable computers
At 09:34 AM 19/07/2005, Wayne Johnson wrote:
This is why I don't like to quote a per hour fee as I'm not a
plumber. Many times I'll only charge $50 for cleaning a system &
maintaining their data intact & while the other shops are charging
several hundred for wiping the machine all it's data & then charging
the customer per hour to surf the net to retrieve the necessary
drivers. I also like asking people how much is knowledge worth. ;-)
Yes, I charge a flat rate for all our jobs. Sometimes I lose - but
most times I'm accurate, and since I can do a bunch of machines
simultaneously, it generally works out. (I'm not rich, however, so
maybe I'm doing this wrong.) :)
T
