[geeks] PC Repair shop fun...

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sun, 24 Feb 2008, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> I guess charging $70-80 for a diagnostic is OK in todays world, but I
> can't help thinking in the same 10-20 minutes it takes to drop off a
> laptop the problem could have been fixed, but then you'd have a hard
> time getting the customer to give you $70-80...

Most shops I've been in apply the diagnostic towards the costs of
repair.  That keeps people from bringing in their crap, getting your
opinion and taking it to the kid down the street who'll "fix" it for
half a pizza, but without gouging them.

> I thought (briefly) about opening a PC repair shop after CompUSA left
> the local market, but I couldn't in good conscience charge tose kinds
> of prices, but you have to to pay the rent (I guess).

I've been in that business.  I've run a PC repair shop out of my house,
and I've run two different storefronts for two different companies (both
in rural Texas).  All I can say is that it doesn't scale down well.

When you're a small shop, it's extremely difficult to turn an honest
profit.  There's rent to pay, and, unless you want to pick between
having the shop open and doing profitable onsite jobs, you need at least
one competent employee to watch the store and keep walk-ins happy.
Beyond that, there's always the job that you thought would take 5 hours
that turned out to be as simple as a bad IDE cable, and you sure can't
take the full 5-hour rate on that.  However, there's also always the box
that you thought only needed a good once-over with a virus scanner that
ends up haunting your workbench for a week, and the customer is not only
irritated at not having his PC back that night when you "promised" him
he'd have it back, but he damn-sure isn't going to pay for the hours you
actually worked on it because you spent most of that time scratching
your head.

And then there's the occasional more-money-than-brains customer who you
-really- appreciate because they always want the newest/greatest/fastest
stuff you can order, but it's ever-so-soul-sucking because they're
either going to give it to their kids "to play on" or you know the most
intensive thing they'll do with it is a mail-merge in Word...while you
wait for your most recent side-project to compile on your beat-up 486
laptop that time forgot.

Beyond that, there are the no-pays, the late-pays, the customers who
whine your ear off for hours at a time, and the occasional interesting
customer who has the strangest ways of applying his technical
knowledge[0].  You don't really want to get -rid- of any of them (except
for possibly the no-pays), but they all consume a tremendous amount of
time and energy.

Basically, in a small shop, you charge those sorts of rates for two
reasons:
   1) You're a convenience to the customer by being a happy, friendly,
      smiling face that will answer any question they can come up with,
      and you're willing to look at their box now-now-now if they stomp
      their feet hard enough, instead of the "Geek Squad" dweeb who will
      drool on his nametag and tell the customer "that's against policy"
      or some other garbage.
   2) You have to do it to stay in business.  Unless you work out of your
      house and only do on-site work or take-away work, you just have to
      do it to make ends meet.  Beyond rent there are utilities,
      employees, dry spells, inventory, etc.

I had to get out of it.  I really liked interacting with customers
because they honestly appreciate someone who doesn't treat them like an
idiot (to their faces, anyhow), and who is genuinely willing to answer
their questions.  But, barring the occasional bonanza[1], it's a labor-
intensive way to break even.

Personally, I've found my best (IT) work in being the IT guy at a
company that is pretty far removed from IT as an industry[2].  However,
I love that, for the most part, that end of things is Someone Else's
Problem now.


[0] Example: an elderly customer of mine upgraded to a new Mac with the
     then-new OS X 10.2.  He'd been running a Mac LC III for the longest.
     Thankfully, he'd been running it with software far too new for the
     old box, so a good amount of it would play nice under OS X.  So, I
     convinced him to try OS X because it crashed less, and wasn't all
     -that- different, to the extent that he used the system.  Well, he
     didn't like "all those folders" cluttering up his hard drive, and he
     knew he wasn't supposed to mess with them, so he put them all in a
     folder called "Don't Touch".  Hilarity happened at next reboot
     because OS X doesn't take to that as well as System 7 would.
[1] Watching the weather report was useful.  Every time a big storm
     was a couple days out, I'd try to have plenty of 56K modems on hand.
     They were cheaper by the carton, and I'd probably run of them over
     the next couple days.  Other shops would run out early and have to
     order them, only to find out someone else bought what the local
     distributor had on hand, heee.
[2] Did the ISP thing.  That was fun, but extremely stressful.  Did the
     consulting thing, didn't break even.  Working for the state in IT
     was rewarding[3], but not as much fun as private industry.
[3] Nothing says "I'm treating myself to a steak dinner tonight" like
     being able to say "I saved the taxpayers of my state $5M today!"
-- 
Jonathan Patschke | "There is no such thing as a short of reserves...
Elgin, TX         |  one bank can have a problem...the Fed can print
USA               |  money, there is no shortage."
.                 |     --Jim Glassman, US Economist, JPMorgan Chase