Frodo301

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy helping people with their computers and the problems they may have. I especially like to help the ones who are willing to get their hands dirty and do the work themselves or need assistance. But damn, I hate it when friends and coworkers who I have helped time and time again constantly nag me to replace this or fix that. And oh lets not forget that we're friends and of course you would never charge a friend . Let me preach on this...Last week I helped a coworker with his computer. The powersupply was shot so I replaced it at *my cost* and installed some ram that I had extra of. I charged about 1/2 price on the ram although it was only about six months old because I thought I would cut these guys a deal as we *are* friends. Reinstalled Win 98se, a virus scanner, some games and tweaked the hell out of the computer. Total time spent on that job was about 4-5 hours. Printed up an invoice and decided to a what I thought was a *very* inexpensive labor charge of $15.00. I thought they would not have a problem with the charge as they were saying what ever you charge is ok and put some in there for labor for your troubles. Printed up an invoice, delivered the computer, and the next day I get the cold shoulder. I'm asking is everything ok with the computer, are you satisfied? Yes, yes, but still the bitchy attitude (these persons are my supervisors). So I corner my first line supervisor (they are married) and he says that his wifed was peeed because I added the $15.00 charge. When she said to add some for labor she only meant about $5.00 . Heck, I charge $25.00 an hour to do work I'm making money for so I thought it was a hell of a deal. Anyway it all rolled over but it's made me where I'm going to make sure I let the other party know up front what I expect if anything. So what do you think, am I right or wrong? Have you had these problems? Thanks for the vent and for listening.

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The greatest thing you'll every learn is to love, and be loved in return.

Yeti

Around Maryland the computer repair *union* charges 35$ minimum. 75$ and up in some cases.

If you undercut us we will come to your house and beat you with a bat!!!!

And yes i do feel that my friends use me, but i don't mind

Lol , wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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Frodo301

Live in a small rural mountain community in VA. They start to have convulsions and drool tobacco spit whenever I try to charge over $25.00, they also go to the competition . Ahh, the joys of living in the mountains, lower wages, limited broadband selection, and Wal-Mart is "the mall"lol. Lot's of fishing though, hunting, four wheeling trails, hiking, etc. I enjoy the beauty and the small town living though.

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Ryoko

small world, eh? i live in richmond

anyway, the company i used to work for charged $95 an hour for a 3 hour minimum. i charge friends that have problems all the time $25 an hour, and i don't charge friends who really have a problem, but don't waste my time with the little stuff.

i used to train in fishersville, anyhow...

alewisa

'Bout 10 yers ago, I was living in Chatham, the Royal Engineers trade training depot. All sorts of trades taught; bricklaying, painting & decorating, design, plumbing, etc. ANyone had a PC/Amiga problem, they came to me. Most common problme was printers. And this was the time of DOS/Win3.1, so everything came with its own drivers. Did I mind spending an afternoon getting something to work? Nope, and local PC shops were charging anything from £15-£25/hour for labour.

One mate was in a bad fix. He had bought a new printer, and trying to install the drivers had managed to kill his PC... All his coursework (9 months worth) was on hard disk, and of course no backup... So I completely resurrected the PC, salvaging all data, and installing his new printer (6 hours work). wo weeks later I wanted a bar-b-q built, guys was a brickie, so I went to see him. We could get the bricks from camp, but he wanted cash for doing it! When I gently pointed out that I had spent 6 hours getting his PC back, he said that wasn't really work, I was just sat on his PC!!! Typicall attitude, pur friends dont realise that it's time they are paying for.

Nowadays, I limit anyhting to a comment. Have built a few PC's for mates (ex-gfriends mum, her mate H). I don't offer any support. They bugger it up, they help themselves. I have a life, and don't relish the phonecalls asking me to give up an evening working out what they did and putting it right.

Jude, for example, runs a cafe. She installed a USB printer. Managed to bugger something, called, asked me to help. I gave her an invoice, she complained. I walked into her cafe next day ordered some food then refused to pay. She got the point, and acceptd it in good faith. Haven't had a call from here in a while now :-)

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And too many damn PC's to care!

UberLord

You guys have the wrong friends - all my m8's build their own rigs and earn top £££ various parts of the great IT gravy train

Hence, the only calls for help I get are about 1 once a month - and thats mainly to configure/update firewalls and av software as the user can't be arsed until they get stung - oh well

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peroni

I love my friends. How else would I get rid of those S3 virge cards that are filling up my cabinet?
And not for free of course, those were the best the technology could offer just a few years ago...

so, yes you must have the wrong friends

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Zardon

in this case I tend to agree with Frodo, I think friends always will take advantage to a point of a persons skills and knowledge, and as my skills, like yourselves tends to be on the computer side of things, I am always getting requests for some help or another on some level. I have never charged for help or for my time with friends or colleagues.

Sometimes the people I help can return the favour on some other level so perhaps its not just entirely a one way thing.

I think in your case Frodo you have been treated very unfairly and I think the people you have helped, should find next time that you "dont have the time right now". Establishing the "rules" up front is very important.

Sorry to hear that, sounds unpleasant.

get them to join the forum and we can FLAME them to a nice burnt crisp.

AshG

I built a computer for a bitch of a girlfriend once. I gave her half the parts and only asked for $75 in return. The night the computer was finished, she installed The Sims and promptly broke up with me. She also refused to pay me and asked for the RAM she had bought me for my birthday back. I kept the RAM.

I built a "God-Box" this past fall for the son of a coworker. I was told that I'd be "recompensed appropriately" for the work. SkyHawk case, 500W PSU, Abit KR7A-RAID, Xp 1800+.... Well, you get the picture. It was a tricked-to-the-max graphics workstation and gaming powerhouse. After spending around 15 hours setting things up, testing settings, and tweaking it incessantly, I gave the system to the son, and everyone was very happy, actually pretty impressed. How did they pay? A ----- jar of homemade sweet dill pickles! I'm sorry, but a jar of flanging sweet dill pickles is not *($&%$*^%# appropriate payment! When the fan on the PSU went dead, I just said "f**k'em" and gave them a link to NewEgg.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to make people sign contracts or service agreements from now on.

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Frodo301

Ryoko
I used to get out your way quite a bit when I used to live in Franklin County near Smith Mountain Lake. I figure we're about 200 miles apart as I now live near Wytheville on the other side of the state.


alewisa
I like your way of solving the problem with the refusal to pay in a resturant. I'm thinking about using that one.

peroni
I do the same with Nvidia TNTs

Zardon & the rest
I really do enjoy helping my friends with their 'puters and for the most part I help all of my friends without charge. Wheather or not I misinterpreted what they intended when they said to add some $$ for my troubles or they were simply talking out of their fourth point of contact, I don't know and at this point I don't think I really care. Since their work computer bit the dust yesterday and they found out first hand how much their contracted computer service from Winston Salem cost the company today, I think they have had second thoughts on my service. As for joining the Driverheaven forum, I think i'll have a talk with them tommorow about joining Rage3d instead Zardon. He's a h u g e Nvidia fan

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digitalwanderer

I've been following this thread for a couple of days now without responding, mainly due to the small stack of busted computers sitting on my kitchen floor right now. It was a BAD geek weekend for me.

I have a very old & dear friend who I've always helped with his pc problems, and man-o-man can he get some PROBLEMS! Just dumb stuff, like the first time I fixed his 'puter it was due to his CPU fan being so clogged with dust & tar that it had ground itself to a halt and burnt itself out. Every other fan in the case had died previously the same way, I ended up replacing 4 fans and the power supply and basically just cleaning about 3 years of grime out of it.

Fast-forward...his floppy dies the baby-cracker death. Replace floppy.

Fast-forward...virus, silly AOL users, remove and rebuild.

Fast-forward...virus, silly AOL users, remove and rebuild.

Fast-forward...virus, silly AOL users, remove and rebuild.

Fast-forward...CD craps out, replace.

Fast-forward...virus, silly AOL users, remove and rebuild.

Fast-forward...virus, silly AOL users, remove and rebuild.

Fast-forward...HD craps out, replace and add some old memory I have laying around along with a viddy card capable of 16-bit. Flash the modem to 56K and fix the wiring in his house so he actually gets 52K. Happy-happy, joy-joy!

Friday night...Stop by to pick something up, happen to notice his computer off. I was very foolish and inquired if there was a problem....seems that it had mysteriously quit working a few nights previous and now it wouldn't even turn on. I have a sudden flash-o-insite/cold-shiver-down-me-spine and ask if that wasn't coincedently the same night as the big thunderstorm, (do you see it coming yet, eh?), as I go to behind his pc to see it DIRECTLY plugged into the wall outlet without a surge protector, and he replies "You know what? I think it was!".

The pc is a total "deadstick". I knew the powersupply was shot at the least, but when I tossed a new in it made the most HORRIBLE high-pitched screaming when I turned it on. Not a "beep", this poor thing was just screaming in a continual high-pitched whine.

I'm pretty damned sure that the PS, mobo, CPU, are fried; I'm hoping I might be able to salvage the CD-rom, HD, & memory from the board. I'm trying like hell to rebuild the guy a working box out of left-over parts I have lying around, (My friend ain't really got any cash to spend on his pc. But like I say, the guys a good friend of mine....a REAL good friend.), but my head is sort of spinning 'cause the next day my son's "new" computer crapped out too and is just a deadstick also and I'm clueless as to why. (Well, the fact that I was using a bunch of old parts of uncertain origin might have had something to do with it.... ) No problem, I hadn't given his old computer to his sister yet so I just substitute it in until I can fix his up right.

It won't boot, it won't post, it won't beep. My faithful old Packard Bell Legend 100 (PB520r) has finally given it's last for me. Again, total deadstick and I'm clueless as to why. (And I know that pc intimately inside and out, it was the first pc I ever upgraded and it was a bitch and a half!)

Funny thing, pc's are just a hobby damn it! The Mom-thing comes first, and it's been a REAL bad Mommy week for me. The wife had to work a LOT more than usual last week due to a death in the family of a co-worker, and ended up working a 65 hour week! (Compared to her usual 32. ) So I've basically been stuck with the kids, (I say "stuck" with the utmost amount of love and respect for my children, I'm just bitching here.), since last Friday. It wouldn't be so bad if my daughter wasn't going thru the terrible two's with a vengeance right now, (I'm having a battle of wills with a 2-1/2 year old...and I have been losing badly lately at it!), and was a bit finicky about having me out of her field of vision for more than 10 minutes. (I won't even talk about her and me and sleep lately, I've been living on less than 4 hours again for the last 10 days. )

I digress, I was talking about geek-problems here. My bad.

I got mad last night that the pile was sitting there and that my son didn't have his pc. He really loved his new computer, and the kid is good with one for a 5 year old, so I want to get it back on it's feet quick. Rather than try and sort out the various problems with the archaic components, I took the easy way out and just threw some money at the problem. I still have my PII350 lying around that served me so well for so many years, so I decided to go and hunt him up a decent old slot1 to replace his fried one. (I also have an Asus 370 slot1-FCPGA adapter that I'm not using since replacing my old slot1 with a TUSL2-C, so I can use it in his down the road and pass-on one of my CPU's to his box when I upgrade. I always try and look at my upgrade paths holistically. ) I found an Asus P3B-F for $55us and ordered it deciding that onboard sound & viddy SUCK no matter how cheap I want to go, so I went hunting for a viddy & sound card. Ordered up a Visiontech 64MB GF2 GTS-V for $50us, a Hercules Fortissimo for $23us, and a 40GB Maxtor 5200 HD for $63us. Whilst contemplating how stupid it was to just assemble the parts to a pc online in a late-night, baked component shopping spree; I realized that since he had a pretty nice system shaping up (well, for a 5 year old it seems awful damned nice to me!) there was no way in hell I was going to pull an old power supply from a pile and toss it in there...so one more quick stop to order a enermax 300w for $41us. (I got me some religion, I'm only going enermax from now on. BIG difference!)

So now I just have an overwhelming desire to put together a decent system for my friend that he can hook-up to the net with, (and his kids can do their homework on, it's not ALL about porn. ), with these 3 broken boxes on my kitchen floor and any other parts I have lying around. I figure I'll be able to string SOMETHING together out of it all...if not I don't deserve to call myself a geek!

Sorry for the length, but that rant has been building in me for a while. My take on the helping friends thing? It can be annoying as hell, they never understand that these things cost money, and they'll blame you later down the road when something goes wrong; that being said I have never, ever turned my back on someone who has asked me for help with a pc nor do I ever plan to. I can't, I owe too much to too many people out there who helped me learn about pc's and helping other people is the only way I can pay them back. I "owe for the flesh" so to speak.


EDITED BITS: Went back and corrected my mobo error. I ordered an "Asus P3B-F", not an "Asus P3V-F", (C'mon, I'm a BX-man! )

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WTF is up with the sigs?

Greebo_x

???People on this forum have FRIENDS???

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Ijustwannaknow

People do this to me all the time...

But I tell them I charge.


Last Thing I upgraded was a laptop.

I made 40 Dollars.

Yeti

Yeah, and a job, and a car... and most (although not me ) have a girlfriend. --- eh...

You'd be surpriesed how many closet techno freaks live out normal peaceful lives.

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Zubir

i love franklin, n.c. when i make my millions, i plan on retiring there

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digitalwanderer

Found a mobo that worked and got my friend a pc that works just about as good as the one he fried, I didn't even lose the data on his hard-drive. Did a bit of tweaking and he's now getting a 52K connect on a dial-up and is extremely happy about it. I was able to salvage most of the components off his old box and the mobo was from my parts pile, so I was able to do it for no charge. (My friends cash flow is kind of tight and I know it, every bit helps.)

My friend was disgustingly happy, so was his wife, so were his 3 kids. (His dogs and cat too, but that's cause I was there not 'cause the pc was fixed. ) It made me feel good to be able to make that much happy with just a couple of 4-6 hours effort and some old parts.

Sometimes friends take advantage of you, but it's also a pleasure sometimes to help out a friend. Something that is no sweat for me was an impossible problem for him, and I was glad to be able to help.

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Rayder

Yep, people are always using me for my PC skills. They all want it done for free and then complain when THEY crash/virus out their system months later. Now that I charge a $40 dollar minimum(no payments), nobody bothers me anymore. My specialty is building and setting up PC's. Anymore, I tell them to go to Gateway or Dell because those people could build one cheaper than I could. That's what I tell them when they want a 2 gigahertz PC, but don't want to upgrade things like their video card or power supply. There are some people that just won't believe ANYTHING you tell them about PC's, but come crying to you when they whack out their system.
Then the viscious circle starts:" You built it, so you gotta fix it (for free), all I did was open a file(virus)....it said the file was no longer shared, so I dumped it(uninstalling)...I don't wanna wait for the update to download(windows update)...nobody told me about this or that...wanh wanh wanh " . So now, I just charge the heck out of them until they leave me alone, or until I'm rich enough to disappear "on vacation" or something.

One guy tried to offer me a bag of cheese that he had stolen from work as payment.

Frodo301

Franklin County VA, not North Click as we used to call it in my military dazed .

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The greatest thing you'll every learn is to love, and be loved in return.

Dyre Straits

.....and these days, it's mostly my family that's asking for help. In several cases, though, I've taught them enough that they can do most of the small stuff themselves.

What I have enjoyed doing is using bits and pieces of old computers to put together decent working systems for my kids. (Although all of mine are now grown.) Whenever I get asked for help now, though, I make it clear that they have to cover the cost of parts (unless I've got something lying in a box or drawer here that I haven't used for a good while).

I've helped a few clients (I do home remodeling and maintenance for a living) but try to keep it to a minimum or direct them to someone who can assume liability if something goes wrong. (Which, anyone here knows is not a question of IF, but WHEN.)

Usually, my 'payment' is a nice dinner out somewhere.

Dyre Straits

PS Wytheville! I stayed overnight there during a trip not long ago. We go from Atlanta, GA up to Morehead, KY during Labor Day weekend for Family Reunion. I like to head over to Charleston, WV and go town the turnpike simply for the scenic views. One year I stayed in Asheville, NC on the way back and another year went from Wytheville back into TN and down through the Smokies.

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Yeti

Yeah, Virginia ain't that bad. Us all from Maryland sorta shun the place... but really... we're just givin Virginians a hard time cuz they got George Washington!!! (lol... he was so close to Maryland!!).

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--Oh lord not again

Frodo301

Don't worry about it as we bash West Virginia pretty hard, that more than makes up for anything you can say about VA. You know, I will not go near the border of West Virginia because I'm afraid they'll board it up, force me to take West Virginia citizenship and make me live on the side of the road with the many stoves and refrigerators that people ditch there .


[SIZE=x-small]It's a joke, well not really but lets be nice.[/SIZE]

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The greatest thing you'll every learn is to love, and be loved in return.

Yeti

LOL, its sad though... the homeland of the first 4 (was it?) american presidents now fighting for tourism with pennsylvania. I dunno...

Anyway... Marylands got it good... Silicon Valey 2 here we come ... or are we already here? Quite a few it industries round here.... specially up in columbia... They can't stop building!!!!!

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--Oh lord not again

Ryoko

yeah, west virginia's been hearing it from us for a long time...

virginia has the first president, first colony, and first pig farm

Chaos

Together We Are Stronger !!!! SOLIDARITY BROTHER

hahahaha

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Onde Pik

I help my friends out all the time too, and it doesnt really bother me. What bothers me is when a friend contacts me over messenger and expects me to solve his complex problem by his lousy description. Or when I get asked painfully obvious things. Like "how do I delete my cookies" or "how do I delete the browser history". All such things are not only easy to do, they are easy to find out how to do.

Genrally I hate it when people dont even care to look. I mean many of theese things can be solved my them just having to look in the frigging "options/tools/prefs." menu of the program. They just need to LOOK.

digitalwanderer

I don't have that problem with messanger, but JEEZE do I hate fixing problems over the phone for a friend at times! ("Well it's that screen, you know with the thing...but the thing isn't right, it's all weird looking! No dude, I haven't touched/changed anything it just started happening.") I love my friends and never turn down a request for help, I still remember those 16-28 hour panic sessions I had trying to get my old P60 running again and how frustrating it could be and just don't want anyone I know to have to go thru that! (Although in all honesty I can't say that I know a lot of people who are willing to go thru that...it's what seperates the geeks from the users. )

But damn does it get on my nerves at times!

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WTF is up with the sigs?

DallasStar

I always help my friends out. Sometimes, I even offer help when they don't need it. However, when I'm asked stupid questions, it gets on my nerves (cookies etc). Also, when a part needs to be replaced, I don't just go out and replace the part myself. I tell my friend that there is a certain part (and I show it to him/her) and that it is broken and that it needs to be replaced. I tell him/her where he/she can buy it and tell him/her to contact me once he/she has bought it. Then, I happily fix the problem. Sometimes though..... it just gets UGLY (when he/she tries to be like me and do replacements his/herself. It works out sometimes, but not always. I never charge. Fixing driver issues is what I'm asked about most often.

These things have paid off in some ways. I've successfuly converted one of my friends from AOL noob to a techi (sort of). I now only get asked important questions about stuff like html etc. (though, it bothers me how he never even bothered to experiment with Photoshop and just asked me to walk him through it. I had to tell him about 20 times to just play with the program and that it will explain itself for him to even try it. Turned out, he thought it was easy.. )


Oh yeah, these things happen to my father also. He usually does the same thing too. Its paid off for him too (sort of). People get so happy when he fixes something, that they offer like 100 dollars for his time (but he refuses to accept ofcourse).

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choppy9er

Hey Frodo301,I wouldn't do another thing for those greedy people,just the break on the ram was too good for them.I run into the same problem,if they appreciate it,fine,if they dont, its the last time I do anything.Choppy

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