(Untitled)

[ravenofdreams]

Nnngh.
Alright, everyone, I have to ask. What is your favourite / the best way of telling family members and friends that you will not fix their computer/television/VCR/iWhatever for free?

I ask because it seems like lately they've been coming out of the woodwork. Great-Aunt Somebody, Friend-I-Haven't-Spoken-To-In-Years, all of them, wanting me to

Comments

[fragbert]

My mother was famous for volunteering me to fix her friends' computers. Usually on a Saturday. Bear in mind I wasn't living at home, either.

The first time, I tried to patiently explain that this was my job, not a hobby, and I have better things to be doing than giving out free tech support on a weekend. I analogized that my wife (an attorney) didn't go to people's houses on weekends and draw up wills for free. My mother didn't understand a bit of it. So after the third time she called me, told me that Martha or Edna or whoever had some computer problems, I went and cleaned the usual spyware off the hard drive, and presented my mother with an itemized bill for 75 bucks: $25 per hour for two hours, $10 for lunch out, and $10 for gas.

Of course, I never saw the money. She didn't speak to me for a week (worth every penny of the $75), but never again volunteered me.

[notthebuddha]

$25+
$25+
$10+
$10+
----
TTL $70

Sales tax, perhaps?

[fragbert]

I hate math, and sometimes it shows. *grin*

[jimbojones]

Glad it worked out for you, but you do know that you undercharged pretty badly, right?

On-site service in my neck of the woods - which isn't a particularly expensive one - has run between $75 and $150 an hour for well over ten years now.

All I'm really trying to say here is, if you're only billing $25/hr, I hope you're willing to work for it if somebody calls your bluff. =)

[lunatic59]

I usually tell them to bring it 'round but there's a few paying jobs in front of them, which have priority. Then, if they don't get the hint, let it sit for a week or until they start calling and nagging to get it back. Then if it still doesn't drive the point home, tell them that the problem is beyond your scope of expertise and you'd hate to bork their system any more than it already is ... try the geek squad.

[kizayaen]

Good strategy, for the most part, except for the phone calls wanting you to diagnose and fix their computer over the phone right now.

This is why I usually make EVERYONE, including family, leave voicemails. Then: a) I'll know without committing to a time investment whether it's important; or
b) if they're cunning enough to feign something else, then just sorta casually mention that oh, by the way, my computer's misbehaving... I have a plausible "Sorry, I'm busy as hell at the moment and can't talk long, that's why I missed your call to begin with" excuse.

[historychick49]

My dad and my step-mom are really the only people who ask me for tech support anymore (well, my mom does too, really occasionally, but that's usually only when we're already on the phone talking). They're the good kind of "customers", too, in that they listen to my explanations and make notes on what they need to do in the future. Plus they take me out to eat whenever I visit them, and they help me out in other ways, too, so I enjoy helping them.

(Plus, the utter delight and amazement they both had when I set up their computers to print over their home network was beautiful.)

[penguin_attie]

The only person who needs IT support around me is my mother, and I usually do it happily since she has been doing all my laundry for me ever since I had to sell my washing machine last year. And if I leave her alone with the problem for a while, she usually manages to figure out some sort of solution on her own.

So, uh, I guess the moral of that is... don't talk to people who can't fix their own computer?

[mouser]

Mother (and dad on the opposite coast) aside, I demand something wacky.

As in, one girl I told I would only do it if she topless.

(No, it didn't work.)

[jecook]

Alas, the only ones I know that would even ask me are either happily hitched already, or ones that I've already seen the goods on.*

* To paraphrase Ron White: "When you've seen one woman nekkid, you wanna see the rest of em nekkid."