Should I support home users?

Hi briwlls,
I applaud you on your Small Business venture. It takes a lot of guts to go it alone these days. On your posted question, I would not be where I am financially and spiritually today if I had not supported (choice) home users. As a business person (yes, you ARE that first), you cannot ignore a viable market for your services. There CAN be problems with dealing in the home market, but that is the nature of the beast. I have read several positive posts in this string and many negative one's as well. As the negatives go, forget them. Your work/market environment will likely not match theirs.
As the Home Support business itself goes, you have to choose your battles on a case by case basis. That includes the fee's you charge and the type of work/liability you assume. Your invoice or statement should be properly worded to indemnify you from and end user missuse, neglect or ignorance. You should not possibly be held for the actions of others when it comes to the end user abuse or neglegence.
Fee based services are rarly case in stone. To that end you must examine the current fee based trends in your service area and decide how competitive you wish to be. Then charge accordingly. Base your fee's on a menu of different services or on an ala carte.
Depending on your Tax base, you may be able to write off heavily discounted serves (for the elderly or poor) on your income statement at fiscal year's end.
An far as taking on a contractor, be very careful who you hire. You will be assuming responsiblity for their actions, good or bad. Have a good liablity contract in place with him/her to cover yourself (just in case), and look into have them bonded as well.
Its a big step moving from a single person shop to a larger operation. There are many great aspects as long as you keep your back covered as well. Good luck

You are exactly right. This is exactly what I know after years of doing home support. It's not worth 450 headaches! JUST SAY NO!

I agree it is ludicrous to spend $300 to repair a $300 piece of hardware... but what I think you fail to take into consideration is the value of the data in that hardware. Does that make it right to charge $100/hour? That depends. The local market will dictate that, not any of the people on this board. That's econ 101 - supply and demand. Like you, I help friends and family mostly, but I charge nothing. When I do get a referral, it's not worth my time to do it for $25/hour. If someone else in this area will do it for that much then good for them, win-win for everyone. But if not, people are willing to pay more - and my rate will often be less than others in the area - only because I do it as a side gig and I don't need that income to survive.

Everything "Just say no" says is the truth. I am in my 10th year of business, and I have seen everything he described. End users are a waste of time. They only spent $299 or $399 on the whole computer from Dell or whoever in the first place, why would they pay you 2 or 3 hundred bucks to fix it....? They won't, and to think otherwise is a waste of time that you could be spending on other areas of your business.

The 3 most important part of any business. I started my company in 1981 and home users are a large part of our monthly income. Very few of my home owners are savey enough to sign a formal contract so the vast majority of what I end up doing is "cleaning up" after their kids. I currently charge by the hour.

Absolutely support home users. More and more people are working from home - in need of good technical support. My friend called the Geek Squad and they over charged her through the gazoo! They replaced her hard drive when it did not need to be replaced, did not add back all the programs she had on her original hard drive, even though she supplied the disks, and then, charged her close to $2000! Good techs with maintenance contracts are hard to find for home users. Mine charges me $75 an hour if it is work not covered by my "maintenance" contract. Maintenace includes making sure the computer is running efficiently, cleaning components - checking all connections, drives etc. Extra work is internet connectivity problems, cleaning off spam - virus checking. All components that need to be replaced or upgraded, I am charged by the component and the labor

Go for home maintenance !!

I have the opposite feeling. My worst customers are older folks (sorry!). Even though they are willing to pay whenever you call, I get kinda tired having to re-explain things - simple things - like attaching files.

Then again, they aren't much worse than my regulars. Some people just don't get it. In fact, I'm currently dealing with a royal pain in the a$$ this wek (again) who keeps having problems with the family's wireless network. The most recent is someone knocked the power cord out. Now, they still can't figure out to connect the desktop with wireless card. 2 weeks ago I had to drive 20 minutes both ways just to show this person how to make two clicks to connect to the network and enter the password... Well, after 20 minutes on the phone Saturday and whatever time I have to spend today, I have to charge....

I am not quite sure where you read that the home market was not a viable one, but i have read articles in USA Today, and others and they all point to this segment as a grow business oppotunity. This is the reason that you are seeing the big boys move into the sector. This reason is that everything is getting so technical and requiring setup. As for me personally, it has been quite a bit in extra income. I work in IT for a Educationally provider, so people come to me alot. I average about 2-3 jobs month, and that is just side work. I work on both computers and home electronics setup up. Training is also something to look into. I find that it is best to charge home user by the hour. Since I do not have the over heard of a shop, I try to cut them break on the price. The best advice is to find out what the providersin your area are charging and decide where you what to fit in there. On you are familiar with what you are doing, then you can using let a person know what they are getting into, i.e., a re-install of Windows XP w/updates is ~ a 2 hour job. That give the customer an idea of what they should be prepared to spend.

Once you see the power of LogMeIn, you'll understand why other remote access software is so limited and incomplete. You can read more about it here:

http://techbuilder.org/recipes/174401986

If you have a special number to call for support, that costs YOU and the end user money, and they avoid calling it.

They will always call the sales number instead, which is always going to be a free call. The customer thinks, for whatever reason, they should NOT have to pay for support in most cases where they've paid you in the past.

So now you've increased your expenses and need to make even more money to just break even.

I think you could have a nice business w/ home users, if you keep your cost afordable. Home users mostly can't afford to pay $75-100 or + $ an hour for IT service. I don't. Rather I learn it for myself to solve my own problems. But if I could get help for a resonable cost, I probably would to save time and trouble. Say $25 an hour.I recently built 3 servers and two PC's for a home network. A FTP/file storage server, an ISA Server for my internet comnnection/firewall and a web server and two win xp pro machines. I didn't have or know anything about server OS's so I spent months on the net at sites like this asking questions from you pros. I also bought some training vids. I would have gladly paid a good IT person $25 an hour for help when I needed it, versus taking months to get it all up and going. Of course, I now know more about Win server 2003 than the IT pros at my workplace.Lol!

Yes, when I was in my early twenties, I thought the same way. But then in my late twenties, I realized I still have nothing. I thought I was going to be much more successful, but I wasn't. And the bills were starting to add up. As you get older, the new credit card bills and the old credit card bills add up, as do car repairs, and the cost of groceries and electricity, and heck, even stamps and gas for the car!

If I had to do it all over again, I realize now that I should have been charging more when I was younger, when my expenses were lower, to prepare for the more expensive future that is always looming around the corner. And if you start a family, then you really understand how expensive life can get as you get older.

True, I felt good helping people for less money and sticking it to the man. After all, every person I helped, was one less profit made by some faceless corporation who doesn't care. But that good feeling I had inside couldn't help me from ultimately filing for bankruptcy.

The issue I have is 'techs' like this guy who think a backup is not possible if the machine is, how did he put it? "Munged up."

You need a license to cut peoples hair, but if you want to be a technician, just call yourself one. That's it.

There is NEVER a need to reformat a hard drive. A real technician should know that ALL versions of Windows can be reinstalled CLEAN, without wiping the hard drive. It's so easy and so convenient to the customer, as well.

True, drivers and software will still need to be reinstalled, but at least the customers data is still there.

I'm not here to teach you how to do it if you don't know how, but if you have any promise as a real tech, you know how to use Google.

Any technician that says "I can fix your PC by reformatting it" is actually saying "I do not know how to fix your PC" and if the end-user knew this, I bet many of these self-proclaimed techs would need to find another career.

Home users are just that home users. Most brick and motar computer shops run 8-5 some 8-6. Some hours on the weekends. If you have an 8-5 job and are available from lets say 6 till 9 I think you will find a market devoid of technical support willing to come to their home and upgrade/install/or just plain fix thier equipment. If you do not mind weekends, and you are good I could see you moving in on the brick and motar computer shops that would possibly be open on Saturday. The problem is the networking getting your name out there as a viable solution to their after hours computing needs. Sorta like a 7-11 with tools.

You are ignorant. 'nough said....

I couldn't have said that better myself. Again, there are always exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking, it's not worth the frustration of trying to save someone from drowning who keeps voluntarily re-entering the same lake, and then cry for help that they cannot swim because it's too much hassle to learn how. After the third time, I quit offering to save them. Let them find someone else to be their personal PC butler.

Brown Sh!t that a majority of the morons post on this bulletin board

KaptKos

Keep in mind that more and more people are buying laptops. The typical problem people have with laptops is usually hardware related. A bad power connector, a bad DVD drive, a cracked screen or it simply won't power on.

Unless you are an authorized repair facility for that make and model of laptop, you can't get the parts at any price - and if you could, be prepared to spend the next four hours removing teeny-tiny little screws and very delicately unsnapping plastic pieces being ever so careful as to not break one of the connecting tabs.

It just doesn't make sense. As more home users get laptops, they limit what anyone can do for them on-site, regardless of price.

That was great, but have you seen this?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/388b/

Have you read this article?

http://news.com.com/Corrupted+PCs+find+new+home+in+the+Dumpster/2100-1029_3-5792379.html

Sources say Peters, who was born to poor temp workers in eastern Virginia, would often go to offices where his mother worked and sit on her knee. According to his family, he once took up her pencil and said, "Pencil be the death of me. Oh, Mommy, this pencil be the death of me."

KaptKos

I think it's comlicated if you did the phone support out of India, then did home visits on a Fee based system like $15 a month with a one $40 home visit flat rate. It might be viable, remember the market that your looking at is one of finite resources and it would sensitive to large service call bill's anything over $100.

The only problem I've had is that a couple of people will agree to a price, then when the work is finished to their satisfaction, will say they will only pay after they see if it works for awhile.
The only strange thing is that they were both from the same country originally. Most folks don't mind paying for what they get though.

I've been going to people's houses and fixing their boxes for about 5 years now, and the cash has been worth it. As you read 4 years ago, it's not the kind of cash you want to build your business around, but if you've already put in the work to establish a customer base why not keep the cash coming?
i currently go out for a woman whose son does web development as well. We charge $80/hr, i take 60% and she uses the rest to pay for small necessities and advertisement for her son's business. $48/hr to a post grad trying to save a little money or get a little for a trip isn't so bad. I've always had a full time job so whatever i make going to people's houses is just pocket change. if you can contract your home business side out and have $35-40/hr coming to you but not have to put any effort in other than finding a capable contractor/technician...why not? he/she's dealing with the headaches of visiting a home 25 times for wireless issues, you're getting paid off their efforts. it's the American Way!!

Never listen to the experts. Remember, it was an expert at IBM who said, "Home Computer, Who would ever want a computer in their home?" I not only do a lot of work with small businesses, but also a lot home networks. Though the experts can understand it, a lot of people want a home network to take advantage of the efficiency of laser printers and upscale Photo Inkjets while also controlling costs and what their kids print. Not to mention a firewall and setting the parental control software. Plus a lot of my customers don't have the time to go around checking their kids WEB history to look for potential problems. I've help one parent turn the authorities onto a 'teen' who was meking some very adult suggestions to their 15 year old. The 'teen' turned out to be a 46 year old man wanted in two other states. Their are a lot of opportunities in the home market. One home office I started years ago with one PC and a fax now runs a home business with 6 work stations, network fax, network color laser, and a server running the entire business, including billing and tax statements.

> I am SO DAMNED GLAD I don't live in the USA.

I read your post twice. I still don't understand why you're "so damned glad" that you don't live in the U.S. You failed to explain it in your post, even though you went out of your way to make a big deal about it.

just because you can buy a new PC for eventually the same price you pay for service calls, you are missing the point. You need to look at it as a cost of ownership expense. you need to continually cut and feed your grass. if you don't do it yourself, you need to hire someone. smae with maintaining computers. Buying a new one won't solve your problem for long if you haven't learned what screwed you up the first time.

you can not get a good professional for the same price, that is the who problem with trying to support home users. They need help, but where's the money?

I run a small home based business providing computer services. On the repair side all my business comes from home users who are happy to have someone come and pick up their computer and return it when it is fixed. The value added aspect of having a technician hook the computer back up and ensure printer, internet and email are all working goes down very well. Many of our customers are seniors who get a bit bewildered at all the defences required to run their computer on the worlds busiest and biggest network, the "WWW". I think with the growth of home based businesses and the fact that many homes now have more than one computer the home based market will be a profitable for a while to come yet. That is in a city of just 200,000 people.

Cheers,
Mick Lewis,
MNS Computer Services.

As a parent myself - I agree totally with Beowulf - I would\will do anything (that is, ANY THING) for my little Girl, including demanding to pay for anything that might see her out-of-pocket or whatnot (inconvenienecd would be a good word here, if only I could spell it properly) - if\when she does soemthing for me - because it's about me, in this instance. It makes me feel good, what do I care if she doesn't really want\need the money - it is my perogative as Dad to give. No doubt the same sentiment prevails for Mums too. Just let them do it, they need to, psychologically.

It's possible to earn a living in the correct demographic market area which equates to a willingness to pay for equal value .
Most home users do not understand the cost/benefit ratio of your time and education.
On the other hand the least supported business is in the SMB market place (small to medium business) for all their communications needs.
What a person has to be prepared to do is to think of themselves as furnace repair in the dead of winter and air conditioner repair in the dead of summer .
Be on call and charge for 'instant coverage'.
Today it costs between $75 to 95 in the midwest for the repair person to arrive and tell you how much more it's going to cost to resolve the problem.
As far as Geeks on CAll goes I looked into that business and the upfront costs are very high .
Good luck

> But if you are a pro like me, you pay alot of
> money every year to keep your MCSE, CNE, RHCE,
> CCNA, A+, Network + current.

Your entire post would've had a lot more credibility if you had only left out the above statement.
When I got to that portion of your post, I just rolled my eyes and immediately chalked you up to another self-described "pro" who actually believes that his MCSE or CNA actually have any validity or significance in the real world.

Bottom line: if you're a true pro, and you know what you're doing, you don't need a useless piece of paper from Microsoft or Novell to tell you that.

Hilarious and classic at the same time.. :-)

My wife and I retired early and spent 30,000 dollars on I.T training and exams, So we have a good student loan,
We started doing repairs for home users and found that we had computers coming out of our ears before too long, A few freebees for friends turned into a freebee for a friend of a friend and so on. So now we have stopped doing anything except for people who are willing to barter for goods or cash
One of the most annoying things about home users is once you look at their puter, if you are not careful, you are married to it, and any fault is your fault. It never did this until you did that, even 6 months later.
So to cut to the chase, we do work for people who work for us, I.E my plumber. and only give full support to computers that we build, and install all the software and hardware, then instruct the user in basic housekeeping and maintanence, Always install set and forget software. Sure it is a bit of value added but we never see them back with stupid faults. All that for $100 plus parts, for 12 months. The system works well, and keeps us up to date with industry improvements and new technology, And we are turning work away still

My standard rate is $150.00 AU per hour for fixing and $50.00 per Hour for installing new Systems. But that's to business where time is money and they need the best service available.

Even then when I've walked into jobs where one of the [b]Cowboys[/b] has hit them hard and robbed them blind I've been known to only charge for 2 hours at installation rates per day.

For domestic work which I do very little of I generally charge by the Job. While I do loose some money over things like this I find that it produces far more [b]Good Will[/b] than anything else and keeps existing clients or brings in far more new ones than anything else.

If people think that I'm going to give them a [b]Fair Deal[/b] they are just plain and simple happy to have me or my staff work there.

My son however who only plays games I would love to charge several thousand $ per hour with all the messes that he gets himself into, but provided I can keep him away from [b]My Computers[/b] I'm happy. But admittedly he's got better since one time when I made him reload a computer after a game installation destroyed Windows. :D

Col ]:)

I ask if they do any Internet Banking or have ever used their Credit Card On line?

When they answer YES! I just suggest that it might not be such a good idea to just throw it out as someone may pick it up and repair it and then have access to everything on their computer.

I've yet to have one person not accept this and at the very least they get me to supply new Hardware and dispose of their old systems safely. :D

Col

I fixed systems for friends, family, inlaws, outlaws and basically anyone that asked, for peanuts. No IT training, tons of tech work in the military. I decided to go the dangerous route. MS preferred, AMD preferred, yada, yada. Opened a small shop, actually just turned the sign yesterday. With 8 workstations, I run Virus, Spyware, Temp Cleaning, Autopatcher, and Defrag via PE disk. After cleaning out the crap, customer issues are addressed, and resolved. Memory allocation mods, free Antivirus, firewall, spyblocker, a strong message about IE, hosts mod, firefox installation, and a few extensions, and they are on their way. For $60, they are delighted with their new machines. Actual time in front of any one machine is less than 30 minutes, since most is automated.

I know of dozens of computers sitting in closets, because the folks gave up. I want to see these systems. With the right tools, and the space to accomodate 6+ machines, there is plenty of money to support this business model. Oh, and we only saw 9 machines today. Hopefully there will be better days, but $540 for day 1, isn't bad.

The advent of Vista, is sure to bring the wealthy in search of HD support for their HTPC's. The rest of us will be looking to shore up the stability of our XP sytems. It's a win-win situation for the shop owner.

Don't get me wrong. I'd be happy to support the small business with their needs, but I have plenty of appointments booked up, no worries. If you own your own business, you know how hard it is to say that.

> The other really major problem with home users
> (and in particular seniors) is that 6 months from
> now when they crash their computer installing
> something or letting some neighbors kid play with
> it, they will call you demanding you fix it.

They can call and demand whatever they like.
As long as they're willing to pay for my time..

> Or they want to call and ask you questions about
> it.

I make it a rule never to answer questions on the phone. If they have a problem, my policy is they have to pay me to come visit them on-site. Your customers/clients will only get away with whatever you ALLOW them to get away with. If you draw proper bounderies and explain to them why those boundaries are there, they will respect them and understand.

You can't call up your car mechanic and expect him to fix your problems over the phone. Nor can you call him up and expect to just "ask questions" for two hours. Plumbers, electricians, car mechanics, computer support -- they're all trades that require skilled people, and skilled people cost money. If you're not able to understand that, then sell your computer and buy a Nintendo.

> When you can buy a new computer for $299, a $75-125 repair bill becomes hard for them to accept.

Okay, let's just settle this thing once and for all. I've seen this ridiculous "$299 computer" being thrown around this thread at least 10 times now.

Here's my answer: if a person is spending $299 on a computer, I don't want that person as a client. That's it...end of story.

Someone who sees their computer as being no more valuable than their DVD player or TV, doesn't deserve ANY computer support whatsoever. If they're that cheap, and if they have that kind of mindset, hey, more power to 'em. Good luck solving your own computer problems with your $299 PC.

Trolls post incredibly offensive messages, or messages on typical holy war topics, and then wait for the flames to roll in. Please don't feed the trolls.

MF

You will be legal in all your dealings of course.
I live in Australia where things are a little more
liberal but you will still need to register et all.
I feel the "city" ogre should review its reason for being at times.

Go ahead everybody, keep believing the amrket isn,t enough for you. I presently make a good living from this market, in fact it is the only market I serve! A very good percentage of my clients are seniors or your mothers ! I am continually busy.

I am in the same boat. She put up with my antics for 18+ yrs. Now I am dealing with some of her agine issues.

My Mom sent her computer back to what she thought was the place she orded it from for repair. Turn out she was incorrect in her addressing.

She kept refusing to let me correct her mistake by letting me fix her computer so I had to sneak over when she wasn't with a System I built to replace what she had, boy was that fun. I got my butt chewed big time.

Then she tried to pay me. I ended up having to accept the money for fear of getting the belt at 40 yrs old, you don't say NO to Mom. But all she really did was pay for her DSL for a year.

Now when she pays her DSL bill she is 1 yr and a month ahead.

Sneaky us kids can be some time. I just hope she doesn' read this post.

These guys have been doing this for a while and doing very well. My personal finding is that the average home owner doesn't like paying the bill for in house computer service.

in my own case I do say 80% of my business is home based wireless setups only, this is a cash cow in rich suburbs, I also do most work after 6:00pm rather than 9:00-5:00 I stress that I work around my customers schedule, I go another step with giving my customers a flowchart with with phone numbers ect to restore there service in case of disruption locally. The most common issues are improving network speed(getting rid of wireless poachers) other services I offer in home market, (child monitering software) (spouse investigation)ok its kind of big brother but it pays my bills.

Do you not give a certain amount of time for the first time they get the NEW COMPUTER ? I sure do and I got PEOPLE whom swear by me ! A few are a royal pain but the rest are good for more income as they spread the word about your service to them . .

Good advice it's just her way of saying "I love you and you're still my child" I say enjoy your visits for repairs and buy her flowers every now and then, Moms love flowers even if they are allergic..Just ask me mum :)

Why don't you pick on Oz....

James

I thought you just forgot it is the purpose of WINDOWS to ruin good code? (where is that angel/innocence emoicon when I need it????)

:p

I only point at typos that are funnier than the original post! :D

My business model is centered on small-medium business, but I, too, do quite a bit of SOHO work. What I haven't quite figured out is, other than referrals, what's the most effective method of advertising? Of course, if you're in the Memphis area, I understand if you don't reply.

For all the posts of people saying they are making lots of money and have work coming out of their ears, they sure do have a lot of spare time to sit around and post messages here.

Just because you make $50-$100 a day is not generally considered 'good enough.' For me, that is chicken feed. I have a house payment, car payment, insurance, groceries, santitation, sewage, taxes, phone, internet, gas, credit card bills and other expenses due every month. Just like everyone else. Its not enough to simply live pay check to pay check. You have to make enough to have some left over for entertainment, savings, vacations and doctor/dentist visits.

You simply are not going to make a decent $60,000 or more a year working as the sole employee of a small company that only services home users. Instead, you'll sit online during your off-time, getting involved in sharing your opinion about conversations like these that ultimately don't amount to a hill of beans and certainly won't help pay the bills.

No one seems to be 'learning' anything, but instead would rather argue about it. How is this productive and profitable and if you're so busy, you sure have a lot of free time on your hands to post messages here.

Just an observation.

you actually take money from your Mother? what is wrong with you? did she charge you a toll when you entered this world or give you a bill after dinner? you are a piece of work.

sounds like you've got that PC fine tuned.

unbelievable.

nice spin. that's total BS. "she puts it in my account".

what color is the sky in your world?

I believe most of the outsourcing is going to India. I've never heard of any going to arab countries.
And the term "sandnigger" is a slur for arabs, so it would appear you are not only biggoted, but truly ignorant as well... which comes as no shock because most biggots are inbred rednecks who dropped out of 5th grade when they knocked up their sisters.

:)

Has anyone thought about using the MLM approach to this issue? I thought about establishing a home user support business on the side (since I do it for free now with all my co-workers). My main concerns are the services to offer and GETTING PAID. I ran accross an online service that may - MAY - be a solution @ www.onforce.com
They seem to be the Network Marketing of PC repair!

Any thoughts on this type of service?

There is some good advice that I will certainly try and implement in my business.

I do abide by number 3
"3) Establish a ?no pirated software? policy and stand by it. Refuse to install pirated software. You?ll be surprised how much additional business that one policy will generate."

I tell users before doing anything that if they do not have the original disks or license code then I cannot install the software for them, and yes I have got business out it (especially with microsoft office).

The following is a great idea that I am going to offer immediately.
Establish an emergency charge and stick to it. You?ll be surprised how many clients call you claiming an emergency. When they find out the charge to ?drop everything else? to respond to them instantly you?ll be amazed how quickly they schedule an appointment.

However I would find it morally difficult to drop a real "emergency" like a network outage or data loss to fix someones favourite screensaver just because they are paying a bit more money, but I can see that once I start employing a few people this strategy can become more viable.

(or at a trial rate) for one month or two, whatever amount of time you think it will take to determine the needs of your customers and the cost to you of providing that service. Your shop is too unique to base prices on international manufacturers.

I think you're reading it

MF

There are millions of computer owners, but you will have to run the numbers to see if it can be profitable for you.

If you can control your costs (mostly labor) and not spend too much time getting from one job to the next you can do well in this field. Its very underserved.

Perhaps, in your opinion, I am a dick. However, this is not the discussion topic of this forum. I'd be more than happy to share my thoughts about someone so judgemental of others in the approriate forum. We can call it "What I think about you." If you think honestly believe anyone cares what your thoughts are, it would be a great way to give the people what they want.

Problem is, no one asked you what you thought of me, and this forum is specifically reserverd for the discussion of whether or not home support can be viable and profitable. If you'd like to join us in the discussion, you are more than welcome.

That's why the rest of us are here.

[post deleted by admin]

[Edited by: admin on Mar 8, 2006 7:20 AM]

It should have been plainly obvious that my comment was ONLY directed at the difference in service charges between Australia and the US.

Get it? NO general dislike of America intended or implied.

However if you like to be disliked, I will do my best to accommodate you.

Hey briwlls,

I don't normally post to these because I'm so busy trying to read everything in my inbox (a downfall I'm working on changing), but I saw your post and felt compelled to reply.

I worked for a small biz in 99 that eventually drove itself into the ground, and when they went under, I ended up starting my own company off of it.

Not that I intended to do that, specifically, but I had a great rapport with the customer base, so much so that many of them had my home phone number because I knew them so well, and they came to know my entire family (one of the clients? kids was a sitter for my kids sometimes).

Well, when the company went under, I was under direct orders not to tell the clients a single word until it was official.

Now, the owner was a real jerk, and I don?t mean the typical jerk; this guy was a class A putz. He oversold all kinds of things w/o knowing for sure that he could deliver, and to make a long story short, he wasn?t planning on telling the clients they were getting dropped. Many of these clients relied on this company for their websites, dialup, all kinds of stuff.

So when many of them started calling me at home, I couldn?t tell them anything, but I did say that I was not able to breath wind of anything, but they should probably start looking elsewhere for support (I was told that I could say that, at least).

Well, the clients asked me to continue to support them, and my phone was ringing off the hook for over a month. I worked 24 hour days for almost a week, with a cat nap in between, and I?m proud to say that I got things running pretty good and organized there for a while; at least on the technical end. I had a good run of about a year, and then when everything was just about maintenance free and there wasn?t much else to fix, reinstall, rebuild, or anything else that would require my expertise, I started thinking about support contracts to support my income, and something that would continue to bring value to the client so that I could remain in my line of work that I loved doing so much.

Needless to say, I didn?t have much experience in that area, nor in advertising, and anything else having to do with business other than fixing the network, or troubleshooting a DSL or Point-To-Point, Frame Relay, etc. On top of all of that, I was running off of pure excitement and adrenaline, and I didn?t give much thought to sleep for quite a while. Running my own business ? and successfully at that ? is a high that is very hard to describe unless you?re really in it and can feel it yourself. I literally had the feeling that I was going to be able to establish a solid company, and provide a solid future for my family.

Well, I guess the adrenaline wore off, and fatigue set in, and then some family medical issues started to take place, and I ended up having to throw in the towel. Well, I didn?t really throw in the towel, but I did start to feel fatigue, and I got a call from a potential employer for a salary that I felt like I couldn?t pass up; it was either that, or continue on in a questionable means of income, and I had already planned for a ?what if? analysis if this sort of thing did happen (one thing I will thank my textbooks from my technical education), and I lead my clients to new destinations for their future support (every single last one of them, I?m proud to say ? I was very serious about my integrity with my clients).

On a side note, I found out that my former employer (the small biz that died) accused me of stealing some of their equipment (which, I later found out that my very own boss was responsible for), and refused to issue my last paycheck. I went to court over it, won a judgment, and have yet to find a means to collect because my former employer is a silver-spoon fed child of a large, well off family, and he?s been able to evade things like this by dissolving companies, and starting new ones up, and to top it all of, his brother is an attorney, and from my research, I see that he attained his own brother for the whole Bankruptcy thing with their company. What a loser.

Anyway, I probably went off a little there on some steam that I?ve had suppressed for some time, and I finally found an outlet! Sorry, I just wanted to give you my two cents based on your question about supporting home users, because half of my clients from that company I started were home users, and word got around fast about my company because of the support I provided, and the integrity I had, and they really respected that.

accused me of stealing his equipment, when it turns out it was my very own boss who had the "goods", and on top of all that, this jerk still owes me two paychecks to which I won a judgement on, and thanks to the state laws of CA, have yet to be able to collect on)

As they offer pop, drinks, sandwitches, and MONEY
to keep their computer running ! Its called SERVICE for a reason . . And I like computers my giant toy has almost every thing there is plugged into it and there is spagettii behind it geez what a mess back there tried ties and it still looks like a mess ! Seems slmost everything has 2 plugs going back to one area . . only things not having 2 cords is the joy sitick and camera . .

I re-imaged a machine for an aquaintance for free. OS was done in by viruses and spyware. Lo and behold, now I'm EXPECTED to be the support for that computer any time something minor goes wrong with it, and it's still under mfg warranty!

You naively assume (a) that American corporate executives ever gave a damn about anyone in an economic class below theirs; (b) that today's corporate "strategic thinking" extends any further than this coming Friday's "earnings guidance"; and, (c) that "shareholder value" is anything except code-speak for "destroy the middle class in America".

Let's be blunt here: Corporations didn't hire women for the good-paying jobs until vast quantities of men were overseas fighting WWII. They didn't hire blacks in quantity until after civil rights laws forced them to. And as long as there is no draconian penalty for doing so, they will naturally gravitate to the cheapest source of labor on the planet, all the while fattening their own paycheck, perks, and golden parachutes.

I'd like to see some major hiring initiatives here in the US, but I seriously don't see it as long as we desire to maintain a thriving middle class. Put another way, we don't have to meet India slum-for-slum, begger-urchin-for-begger-urchin before massive hiring will come back to the states. We will have to surpass India, China, Vietnam or ANYWHERE else in levels of poverty before these same corporate executives will deign to "right-shore" jobs back home.

(And around the office they wonder about my killer grades in sociology ...)

When I still did this a lot, I used Knoppix to back up valuable data like the 50,000 pics of the new grandkids first drool.

Time and materials: X for the first hour, X/2 for each ? hour after that. Wipe (yeah wipe, 1's 0's etc) and reload, estimates at 2 hours; more so if I have to do the Knoppix backup thing. Figure another ? hour if the system is so old that I have to dig out previous versions of Knoppix (usually a cranky video problem too).

Parts? My cost x2 = their cost. Plus install time.

I recommend www.protonic.com or www.techguy.org

Both are completely free and manned entirely by volunteers.

Even with all these companies coming up with so call help for the home user, PC on Call, Geek Squad, etc., they charge a lot of money and most of the time they send most of their work out to somewhere else to be done. For example, I wanted to see what one would say, so I took an iPAQ that I had that needed a new battery. They indicated that they would have to send it away, which would cost $34.95, then if it needed a battery, it would cost another $25.00 for the battery and then the labor to install it. I would have paid close to $100.00 to get a battery put in and I got the kit and the battery from eBay, put the battery in myself for less than $15.00. That was with shipping.

I know that that they need to make money and so do we, but highway robbery is horrible. Do we really need to treat people this way to get business or treat them better to keep them as a customer and get mopre business.

I made a few visits to this old lady and fixed her internet connection. I only got paid for one visit. I wasn't as firm about it as I should have been, but I felt sorry for her.
Then a few months later she sent me a letter wondering if I had made some purchases with her credit card, even though she was there watching everything I did everytime I was over there.
It really wasn't worth the time and trouble.

looking at the big picture, it seems to me that as far as home users are concerned, if you dont have a shop or a flashy advertised car, you are classed as a part timer in the home computer world,
And joe public will try and pay you accordingly. As some of the posts point out, they will pay 100 bucks to get there trans serviced and wont pay 20 bucks to get there P.C serviced. In saying that, any people industry that you can think of, comes to your place with an array of visual gear,the lawnmover man has all these toys weedeaters mowers blowers ,big truck and trailer, The garage has all the toys too, tools hoists. the same with doctors ,dentists.
And we go to fix a puter with a small toolkit and some discs. So visually we are at a disadvantage.
Dont need much to fix a P.C. But they forget about the learning side of it,and how much it costs in time and money.
In a car you need the fancy tools these days to service them, as they are computer controlled.
Any idiot can take the side cover off a computer and that is the way they think.
Just my $20 worth..lol