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Originally Posted by MikeSty
Good point 
I only charge between $10-$20 for repairs I do outside of school, I guess that's why my wallet is empty. Prob. gonna end up as the tech guy for some company, maybe I'll work at the school. The problem I have is - I feel bad asking for money. I guess I'm just "one of those people". But you've got me thinking - It's either me, or GS for $100's of dollars. I feel ripped off now.
I've been over to my friends place 3 times and I've spent a total of like 20 hours working on his comp. The first time I built the PC. The second time (three weeks later) I got the virii off. The third time (three weeks later) I got the virii off again. Actually, I wasn't even done, he just had stuff to do and basically kicked me out of his house.
Here has been my compensation so far:
A car ride
Dinner (his MOM bought it)
Two slices of pizza
A few french fries
A can of soda
Am I being too curteous? |
When did it become curteous to fix his shit for him, just because you can, and he can't?
Do you have plumbers coming to your house to fix your pipes for free? How about your car? Got any mechanics doing your oil for free?
The thing is, anyone with a skill is going to get asked for "favors" from people around them. Does saying "yes" all the time make you too courteous?
I guess that depends.
One of the things I factor in is how much I learned while doing the job. If you got a lot of learning out of a job, maybe it's not so bad you worked cheap, or even for free. It's definately something I factor in. Working for free/cheap/food is a great way to gain real world experiance with PC work. I'd be a lying bastard if I said I didn't grab any PC that anyone would let me fix, so I could get hardware to play with.
A few years down the road, things are different.
My time is pretty precious to me, with a full time job and full time school and full time wife. I simply don't have the time or energy to bail out every person with a PC sob story....unless they're willing to compensate me fairly for that time.
How they compensate me is up to me. Same goes for you. You gotta do what you think is fair, to you and your client.
One advantage to charging (any amount) is that you and your client are establishing a business transaction. You're going to communicate to the client, "I'm fixing X to XYZ state, and you're going to pay me $$ for that only." That kind of fixed-end commitment helps avoid the messes I've gotten myself into. Even if you're charging $5/hour, you're setting an understanding that your skills and time are valuable, and that you aren't committing yourself to a never ending stream of fuckup fixes.
On the other hand, by not charging at all and fixing anything, and you do relieve your pal of all responsbility, you can make it worse. If his "sister" is dl'ing pr0n from dumbass sites, and you're fixing his mistakes for free, what the hell does he care if what he's doing is dumb? You're bearing the consequences of his mistakes.
But, if you sit down and say "dude, *insert education to client here*" and "I'll fix problem here for X cost" you're helping educate, being a good friend, while still helping your buddy remember that if HE fucks up his PC, it's going to cost him, not you. All at the same time, you're helping him learn, giving him an incentive to apply the learnings, making some change, and learning yourself.
I think I can sum it this way:
My neighbor may know how to mow his lawn much better than me, but I'm not asking him to mow my lawn for free. Instead, I learned to mow my own fucking lawn.