How much to charge?

[jaimicook]

I was persuaded to take an EMachine W2646 on the idea that the CD burner wouldn't work. The burner is fine. I have at present, removed 2 bad virus, 60+ trojan horses and 600+ spyware. I have also, temporarily doubled the storage to 80 MEG with a good use WD 40 gig drive installed in addition to the original 40 gig segate drive. I also installed a 512Meg PC 3200 memory stick which I had . This is new, never used. I also installed AVG antivirus as the Norton installation was 2 years out of date and useless. I installed and ran Spybot and Adaware, as well as Service Pack 2 and all updates. I then installed Windows Defender.
I am thinking that $150.00 is not unreasonable for the total. What do you think? I had to remove some spyware dynamic link libraries, as well. It is working well and is much faster. the extra memory and Storage increased the speed considerably.
Is the afore mentioned price unrasonable?
thanks
Jim Cook

[MobilePCPhysician]

did the customer ask you add another hard drive? did they ask for more memory? Charge them for your labor to rid them of the virus/spyware issue. The software you installed was free.

If they want the hardware, then your price is reasonable/a litttle low.

[Crastabule]

Always base charges on time spent. Otherwise you get the computer back in a week because you "must not have gotten all the spyware off".

For home users $25 to $50 an hour is usually in the ballpark, depending on your skill and confidence level.

Unless the customer requested the hardware you should take it out, or give them the option to buy it, other wise you get pegged as someone that "juices" your invoices by adding unasked for services and goods.

[geoscomp]

The drive and the memory, unless the customer was informed of them prior to install..you are not going to be able to charge for..as to the rest..I do about 20 computers like that a week here and in this relatively small area with 4 computer shops, my flat fee for a tune-up/clean-up..including everything you have done besides the hardware, is 60 bucks. This assumes you used a boot antivirus disk which really cleans everything before you boot in to windows. As Mobile says though..if they wanted the extra hardware, you would be closer at around 175 or so..providing you warranty your parts as used--90 days.

[Ferrit]

Well a couple things come to mind.
Is this US dollars?
Did they request new memory and harddrive?

[Garfield99]

Regarding the extra ram installed how much was in the system before you added the 512 stick?, since you've temporarily added this ram stick to the system has the performace of the system improved vastly?, you could show the speed of the system with and without the ram to the owner when they come to pick up the computer.

[street1]

"The customer is always right sometimes confused, mis-informed,rude, stubborn, changeable and even downright stupid. BUT NEVER WRONG "

Until they have paid.

[Raffaz]

This assumes you used a boot antivirus disk which really cleans everything before you boot in to windows.

Sorry for butting in here, but just wondering what software you use to do this? Cheers

Mick

[dr format]

As far as charges, you gotta be consistent. Friendships are lost over stuff like this. If you had as many spyware/trojan items, I would ALWAYS recommend a wipe and reload of Windows, unless you are supermen at digging out all the stuff in the registry. As far as not charging for "free" software, I charge for my knowledge, and effort, not just results. Everybody expects perfection, and you must keep them in reality.