techrecovery | How not to run a startup technical support business.

Word-of-mouth, valuable as it is, really doesn't do much for me. See, when the neighbor across the street has had his computer backed up and repaired 'x' number of times, he then tells a family friend. They ask me to come over and fix their computer, then provide technical support for their 15-year-old son, who incidentally has recently found that music can be FREE!!1!!1 So as not to provide him with more work for me to do, I inform his parents politely that XP Pro can be easily locked-down, and even show them how to do it. The son calls me up a few days later, asking what happened to his internet (I replaced it with Firefox, and one way or another YOU'RE ON AOL), why Kazaa is missing (I reinstalled your operating system), and what the blue, circular 'a' and 'i' icons are in the bottom of the screen. (Virus scanner.) I walk him through installing iTunes on his computer, and that works just peachy, so no worries there...mostly. I had to put up with questions about 'how do I add files to my playlist' and 'where did you put my music??/?' (Under the My Music folder, Mr. Medulla Oblongata.) The kid's going to call me twice a day for the rest of my time in this state, because 'omg! I put WildTangent on there, and now X and Y and Z are happening'...after I tell him repeatedly, "Don't install programs to run games, period, unless they're on a CD you bought from the store, on threat of enormous searing pain..."

And now he's referring me to a friend of his who needs his computer repaired, because (gasp) Limewire and Kazaa have taken over the system. And the circle is just going to keep on expanding for the next month, until it collapses because of my move to another state.

(crosspost to customers_suck, techsupport, and personal)

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coyoteden.livejournal.com

...this is one of the big reasons I ended up getting out of the support biz and into .mil network security. I don't have to clean up Kazaa anymore, but if I see someone running it they get the big olive-drab cluebat.

japester.livejournal.com

Did you give them an invoice?
I found a valuable creation of goodwill and appreciation of the value of your services, is when you do a job gratis, you still create in invoice, put the amount of hours you worked, with the $$$/hour value attached but put a total invoice value of $0.00 at the bottom.

the-s-guy.livejournal.com

Mmm... you are remembering to charge them $90 a pop, yes?

fnordx.livejournal.com

No good deed goes unpunished.

Now you know that any work you do should be followed by a contract saying that the work is free, but any work not related to that work, including phone support, is to be billed at your regular rate, make sure they understand that, and that you'll be happy to do work on any hardware if there's a problem.

"What? You want help installing iTunes? Sure, that's my standard phone support rate of $45 an hour. Should I just bill your parents directly?"

jethro.livejournal.com

Charge them upfront. Collect Upfront

ghostdandp.livejournal.com

I give friends and family a discount. 15% off my normal fees. That tends to make them only call me in an emergency, but still appreciate I'm giving them a discount.

If it's something small I generally won't charge them. If it's "my computer has been h@xx0r3d!" I'll charge. This saves me from spending major holidays working on family's computers "While you are here, AOL isn't working, the monitor keeps shutting off, I can't retrieve my quick books file, and Norton keeps coming up saying theres a virus"