UK Home Repair Business Start-up

[MobileTechie]

I'm not confident i can. I mean most of the stuff i learnt was from building high end gaming pc's a few years ago when that's all i did, game.

Though as a novice lots of problems arise with me putting things together and eventually started working out things wrong with BIOS settings, bottlenecked hardware and the like. I have plenty of self-taught hands on experience.

And the free work i do for friends and family at the moment has given me some field experience. Havn't had to take their computer's home before but have spent 2-3 hours at places.

Comptia a+ will be getting taken in the next month or so, studying for that now, i'm working on it. Ideally i don't want to start up until i have that a+ cert.

Is it plausable to say that any take home jobs will involve something to do with software? I.e the only really long job that i would be better off taking home for would be deep virus removal or something like that. But if that's the case i can just take the HDD and work on that and get it back to them.

Thanks again

No I'd say the opposite really - the workshop jobs are mostly h/w related for me. I rarely have a problem removing a virus onsite but I see a lot of computers with power or disk problems that need taking away. Once you've diagnosed a disk problem for instance, it's not viable to fit the new disk, copy over data, maybe reinstall Windows plus app and test the system on site in a reasonable amount of time. The only thing that makes these jobs financially viable is the fact that you can work on multiple PCs at the same time in a workshop. Individually they are not viable.

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

When I first started out I used to do pretty much everything on site. Even waiting for 3/4 hour for an AV sig file to download over a crappy dial-up. But nowadays I tend to bring everything back to the workshop. Perhaps I'm getting old and fussy and don't like to hang around people's houses. But saying that, I'm always happy when I can come away after completing the job in someone's house on the first visit knowing that I'd don't have to go back there again.

It's always a tricky one to judge, either hang around for ages at someone's house while you know you could be doing other stuff at the same time back at the workshop. Or spend a lot of of time on the road shuffling PCs back and forth. I seem to be on the road most of the time, but at least I get plenty of fresh air and daylight

 

[Martyn]

When I first started out I used to do pretty much everything on site. Even waiting for 3/4 hour for an AV sig file to download over a crappy dial-up. But nowadays I tend to bring everything back to the workshop. Perhaps I'm getting old and fussy and don't like to hang around people's houses. But saying that, I'm always happy when I can come away after completing the job in someone's house on the first visit knowing that I'd don't have to go back there again.

It's always a tricky one to judge, either hang around for ages at someone's house while you know you could be doing other stuff at the same time back at the workshop. Or spend a lot of of time on the road shuffling PCs back and forth. I seem to be on the road most of the time, but at least I get plenty of fresh air and daylight

Exactly. The villages I serve have very poor connections and most of the time Windows updates and patches haven't been done so taking the computer away is the best option to remove viruses & plug the vulnerabilities.

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

Exactly. The villages I serve have very poor connections and most of the time Windows updates and patches haven't been done so taking the computer away is the best option to remove viruses & plug the vulnerabilities.

Plus I run between 3 and 5 different scans which take a helluva long time - and there's only so much tea drinking and thumb-twiddling you can do while sitting feeling guilty for being paid by the hour for watching a progress bar crawl across the screen.

I have a fixed price of £95 for virus removal, cleanup, tuneup, update & secure. This includes collection and delivery and usually turn-round in a day or two (week and weekends). It was originally just for the virus removal, but I can't help but add the others in, it just doesn't feel right not doing it.

 

[CraiGDaniel]

Ohh i don't know - so many conflicting opinions! While i start i can limit my services to just on-site repairs or the option to take the HDD away for scans and tuneups. This has to be the best option for me, short of scaring people off loading their desktop onto my bike? .

 

[Martyn]

Ohh i don't know - so many conflicting opinions! While i start i can limit my services to just on-site repairs or the option to take the HDD away for scans and tuneups. This has to be the best option for me, short of scaring people off loading their desktop onto my bike? .

How do you tune up a slaved drive?
What about bad weather? Leathers and helmet and you arrive soaking wet to a client. Snow and bad weather? You should start to look at remote tune ups, that wouldn't involve travel.

Where also a motorcycle would succeed is doing larger businesses as most of their work would be onsite.

Is there anyone on here who can give some input in for using a motorcycle? There was one member who did it but I think it was businesses.

 

[CraiGDaniel]

How do you tune up a slaved drive?
What about bad weather? Leathers and helmet and you arrive soaking wet to a client. Snow and bad weather? You should start to look at remote tune ups, that wouldn't involve travel.

Where also a motorcycle would succeed is doing larger businesses as most of their work would be onsite.

Is there anyone on here who can give some input in for using a motorcycle? There was one member who did it but I think it was businesses.

Indeed another problem i will face. However i could just wear a full body rain suite and leave it on the bike(secured) arriving in my best nice & dry.

I have this bag http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hama-00062830-Midi-Tower-Lan-Bag-Black/dp/B000EOVQA0 so i could find some way to adapt a waterproof cover to it, hence protecting equipment. Any large or abnormal gaming pc's will have to look elsewhere for repairs while i start up.

There's a way around everything

 

[Martyn]

Nice bag for the back of a car but a motorbike?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hama-00062830-Midi-Tower-Lan-Bag-Black/dp/B000EOVQA0

I hope you're bigger than the bloke in the 6th picture

Btw where do you live, what area do you cover?

I like the case, could be good for the computer and carrying to my car.

 

[MobileTechie]

You're gonna get different opinions because we all work in different ways. However we all agree that a reasonable percentage of jobs have to be taken away and that it is hard to tell which ones are solvable onsite and which ones are not until you're there.

Thinking about rain and leathers etc - maybe you'd be better off taking pretty much EVERYTHING away. Someone turning up to the door with branded clothing and bike and proper box looks pretty legit. You could make the fast turnaround bike service a plus then.

 

[Azz]

I think the motorbike idea won't work either. Some older PC's weigh a tonne, and some are huge some are small. I don't think many people would be happy with their expensive computer being taken on a bike.

Ideal solution would be some sort of box on the back?

Maybe you could look at just doing jobs onsite for now and learn to drive? I tend to do anything I can onsite unless its going to take longer than 2 hours. The longer you are at a clients the less time you have for other jobs. Its much easier to take a PC home and leave it scanning while getting on with other jobs.

 

[Simmy]

I used my bike for jobs that I knew were purely onsite or that were easy to take away (networking or laptop repairs). But in my opinion it won't work as your only mode of transport if you only offer an onsite service. Not without having to spend hours onsite (you won't realistically be able to charge for all of your times onsite) or make return visits with new hardware.

The bike was usually a talking point with my customers and none of them ever seemed concerned about damage to their equipment if I had an accident. Nor did I get the impression they thought it was unprofessional. But then again they might have been too polite to say anything

There was a company near me who used to hire techs who rode scooters to the customer's house/office. If they were unable to complete the job onsite, they would tell the customer they had to to bring the computer into the shop! I'm not surprised the recession swallowed them up.

 

[CraiGDaniel]

Good to hear from another biker Simmy -

Talking to a friend who's a joiner and knows a lot of people who do that end of work.. rekons he can sort me out a custom made 'top box' type thing with space for a large desktop tower and extra space for keyboards etc.

He's coming down on the weekend to look at the bike and get some measurements. Best of all he only wants pennys for it! Obviously i stressed it had to be secure and weatherproof, he seems to think it's no problem. We'll see.

Sometimes it's who you know eh? Will get te box branded etc and possibly a high vis branded bib type thing. Could be a good start!

 

[Azz]

I like the idea of branding the bike etc, but I still can't see how you can safely transport the equipment.

Some PC's I have taken are huge, I don't ride a bike, but I would imagine the ride would be more harsh than a car and you would be risking further damage.

Its all good saying you will take a piece of hardware away with you and fix it offsite, but how would you test it?

I'm not saying there isn't something you can do, i'm sure there is, I just can't see the taking things back thing working. Like you say you have a selling point as you can be quick.

What about an adapted sidecar thing that is made into some sort of storage for taking customers equipment back and storing parts?

 

[CraiGDaniel]

You would be surprised the load you can take on a motorbike - if you havn't ever ridden a bike as your main form of transport it may seem daunting.

Here is an example of a bike that is carrying some load;

And you could fit a lot more on there.

 

[Azz]

You would be surprised the load you can take on a motorbike - if you havn't ever ridden a bike as your main form of transport it may seem daunting.

Here is an example of a bike that is carrying some load;

And you could fit a lot more on there.

80% of PC's I take away wouldn't fit anywhere on that bike.

 

[CraiGDaniel]

Agreed, All it takes is to attach a modified case for large computer towers. It was an example.

In my eyes it can work, you seem very against it however there are 2 or 3 companies in london who pride themselves on delivery speed etc of peoples computers via scooter and they have a modified box on them for the towers.

 

[Azz]

I'm not against it I just can't see how it can work.

How would you work it if you had 2 appointments one after each other and both needed to be taken away?

Just found this:

And it still doesn't look big enough.

 

[CraiGDaniel]

Well i would drop the first pc off and then attend the second appointment. I can afford to do that as the bike costs me half the petrol a car would. I am having a box custom made to fit a computer plus more inside, so theres no way "i dont think it will fit" makes sense, because it's being built to precise specs.

 

[Martyn]

London is a different ball game entirely. You can cover London just on the underground and buses with a trolley as can you can in New York. A scooter in places like London defintely will give you an advantage over a car but if you are out where I live I would be much more productive in my Smart car. Where abouts are you in the uk?

 

[CraiGDaniel]

I'm in essex, near colchester. I wish a car was an option it just isn't. All in all i would need roughly £5,000 to pay for lessons, test, car + insurance (3.5k a yearitself!!)

Whereas i already have a full bike licence, insurance is £160 a year and MPG is huge.

I believe i can make it work, i have to. It's my only option really if i want to get this running.