Virus/Spyware Removal Pricing and Procedure?

[baccart]

I am kind of confused as to how to price a virus removal job. I am competing with $45 to $75 and up virus removal prices.

1. Are you offering a flat price? If not, how do you answer pricing questions?
2. What if the job goes into 2+ hours?
3. Any specific process I could employ that would cut the hour to 1 hour or so?

I boot into safe mode or mini xp via hiren, then run rkill, run avira, run malware bytes. rootkit revealer, and then run hijack this to remove bho/host entries, then remove any unwanted programs. Most of the times it is taking more then 2 hours, and it does not seem like a $45 job.

 

[NeutronTech]

I am kind of confused as to how to price a virus removal job. I am competing with $45 to $75 and up virus removal prices.

1. Are you offering a flat price? If not, how do you answer pricing questions?
2. What if the job goes into 2+ hours?
3. Any specific process I could employ that would cut the hour to 1 hour or so?

I boot into safe mode or mini xp via hiren, then run rkill, run avira, run malware bytes. rootkit revealer, and then run hijack this to remove bho/host entries, then remove any unwanted programs. Most of the times it is taking more then 2 hours, and it does not seem like a $45 job.

Your relying too much on scanners. You can use autoruns and investigate startup programs & services, then that will tell you where to check the registry, delete the files, then your done. Verify with another scanner that you didn't miss something, and run Kaspersky's TDSS tool. This process won't get them all the time, but 90% of infections can be fixed in this manner.

Pricing, I use a flat rate of $99. Some viruses take 15 minutes to clean, others take a couple hours. In the end, it averages out. It sure is nice to get a computer in, spend 15-20 minutes on it and charge $99. But it sucks to spend 2+ hours on one, then the $99 doesn't seem like enough.

However, there's no worrying on the customer's part that the price is going to get out of hand. They know up front what it will cost them, so no surprises when they come and pick it up. Plus, I don't get people complaining that I'm charging too much because they already know how much it is going to cost before the leave it with me. It works all the way around, and everyone's happy.

Of course, on site I charge by the hour. I discourage customer's from having me on site because I'd rather work in the shop on multiple machines. So it is considerably more expensive for me to do it onsite. My business customers don't mind paying the extra, but most residential customers opt to bring their pc in.

 

[ATS]

I charge $30 /hr for virus removal. If I end up doing a Windows reinstall normally I charge $70 for that if I can install off of a recovery partition, I'll charge more if I have to go find drivers for everything.

 

[Ccomp5950]

1. Are you offering a flat price? If not, how do you answer pricing questions?
2. What if the job goes into 2+ hours?
3. Any specific process I could employ that would cut the hour to 1 hour or so?
.

1.) Flat rate of $95

2.) Doesn't matter, the 5 minute "I've seen this one before, PXE Boot, delete offending exe in C:\Users\${Username}\Local Settings\Temp\" makes up for the 2 hour jobs. Once you've got a bit of experience under your belt you will see these, but charge what you are worth.

3.) Look into automating what you can through command line batch files or autoit, just remember to store log files. I've automated a process that scans using Antivir in a PXE Linux environment, turns around and downloads a startup script which runs some further scans once the computer is booted. About 75% of the virus /spyware problems that come through here are... Push Button, Walk away and work on something else...come back 4 hours to a clean computer.

 

[NeutronTech]

I charge $30 /hr for virus removal.

Wow. I don't even touch a computer that cheap. Heck, my diagnostic fee is $35.

 

[baccart]

Wow. I don't even touch a computer that cheap. Heck, my diagnostic fee is $35.

Yes, I am wondering how these Actual shops around here are running a $45 dollar Virus Removal, unless they are bait and switch. One customer had the nerve to tell me he paid $10 for virus removal and handed me a card. I wanted to shove it down his throat literally, but I just walked away. Later I found that business charges 90 dollars an hour and hour minimum.

 

[Jory]

If you're doing malware removal in a shop, or at a home office there is no reason you should be charging more than an hour. I have a lot of my process automated, and it takes hours for it to all be done, but those hours don't involve me paying attention to it. Most malware removal I do takes me like 15 minutes of actual work if that. Even if I had to do everything manually I can't imagine it taking more than an hour of combined time.

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

I charge £95 for virus/malware removal & cleanup - this includes collection and delivery

 

[vdub12]

I charge $130 for virus removals. This includes a tuneup. Thats 2 hours at $65 an hour. If I do an easy removal on site then I charge for my time. Normally an hour. If I try on site and fail and have to bring it back to the shop I don't charge for the time I spent on site.

If you use manual removal techniques you can save tons of time. Also if you are running rootkit revealer from a boot CD you are wasting your time. The way rootkit revealer works is it pulls the registry hive from the drive and compares it to whats running in memory. If you run it on a boot CD you are only comparing the hive from the boot cd not the infected system.

 

[iisjman07]

I've automated a process that scans using Antivir in a PXE Linux environment, turns around and downloads a startup script which runs some further scans once the computer is booted. About 75% of the virus /spyware problems that come through here are... Push Button, Walk away and work on something else...come back 4 hours to a clean computer.

I feel like I may have asked this before, but have you considered uploading your customized distro? It certainly does sound pretty awesome

 

[gunslinger]

Of course, on site I charge by the hour. I discourage customer's from having me on site because I'd rather work in the shop on multiple machines. So it is considerably more expensive for me to do it onsite. My business customers don't mind paying the extra, but most residential customers opt to bring their pc in.

I agree with this approach. It has worked out very well for me also.

I charge $30 /hr for virus removal. If I end up doing a Windows reinstall normally I charge $70 for that if I can install off of a recovery partition, I'll charge more if I have to go find drivers for everything.

Why would you have to go hunting for drivers? Just back them up before a reinstall. You can't do this on all systems that are messed up but if its bootable most of the time you can and it saves much time after the reinstall.

 

[BostonGeek1]

not everyone knows about driver backup software......actually I didn't until a year or so two ago...........most people still download from dell/hp and set them up the old fashion way.....or do the factory restore since that guarantees all the function keys working.

 

[gunslinger]

not everyone knows about driver backup software......actually I didn't until a year or so two ago...........most people still download from dell/hp and set them up the old fashion way.....or do the factory restore since that guarantees all the function keys working.

When I can I also like to use the restore partition if the machine has one. For those that don't know about driver backup software, check these out.


Double Driver

DriverBackup

Driver Magician

 

[JRDtechnet]

Experience plays a large part of my charge. Back when I first started out I was doing hourly, it would take me 2hours or so to remove a virus and get the computer back up and running. Now it's taking me less then an hour. And for awhile I was still charging my hourly rate. I thought to myself, "hmm, I'm doing a better job, yet I'm making less money something is wrong with this picture" so for virus removal I went to a flat rate of $125.00 - $155 on-site. If they balk at the price I tell them what Staples ($238.99) and Geek Squad ($299.99) charges for the same service and they usually book an appointment. Additionally I also do a 'Tune-up' with the virus removal (removing junk files, defraging, removing preloaded software they never use, etc) and if there running less then 1gb Ram on XP or less then 2gb Ram Vista/Win7 I'll try to upsell them some memory.

 

[RegEdit]

1. Are you offering a flat price? If not, how do you answer pricing questions?
2. What if the job goes into 2+ hours?
3. Any specific process I could employ that would cut the hour to 1 hour or so?

I charge a flat rate of $100 for drop offs. If I have to pick it up from the customer then add another $20. My rate includes backing up the first 100 GB of data if they wish.
2 hours? If you only spend 2 hours cleaning it, then you are probably missing some viruses. Once I am able to get the PC to boot to the desktop and appear to work fine I always do a mop up to be sure. I run Superantispyware, Spybot S & D, Malwarebytes, and Security Essentials. I use AutoRuns and Process Explorer. I also check to see if Internet searches for "antivirus" are being hijacked among other things.

 

[ComputerRepublic]

When I can I also like to use the restore partition if the machine has one. For those that don't know about driver backup software, check these out.

Very useful. I was doing it the old fashion way all this time. Thanks!

 

[TimJacobs]

I feel like I may have asked this before, but have you considered uploading your customized distro? It certainly does sound pretty awesome

+1, I would also Like to see it. I have been trying to make me a customized boot CD for me, just haven't really gotten into it that much.

 

[ATS]

Just did a virus cleanup today, it was an older laptop and full of old programs and junk that builds up over time so I told my client that I thought the best way to go about this would be to wipe everything and reinstall Windows XP, and if he wanted any files backed up. I backed up the requested files (about 10 GBs) and used Double Driver to backup the drivers as well. I did a clean install of XP Pro, booted into Windows, and used Double Driver to reinstall the drivers. Reboot. Copied the files that I had backed up onto the new install. I used Ninite to install a load of programs, and MVPS Hosts to setup a new Hosts file that blocks common ad and other bad domains. Reboot again. Windows and AV updates. Reboot. Then used Easus Todo Backup to create a disk image of the new machine.

 

[bigcuedaddy]

Flat rate $99. I made up a 16-step script that uses Auto-runs, scans and manual file inspection. Takes time, but my clients are worth it. 4 hrs removal time, but about 1 hr or so of actual labor time. I really don't like doing them on-site, I avoid it if at all possible. I also go through and do a quick cleanup of junk and make sure their browsers, A/V and runtimes are up-to-date (still seeing lots of IE6 out there).

 

[Kitten Kong]

I did a virus clean up yesterday on a laptop. It was the worst one I have ever dealt with, and thats saying something..

First HDD Scan, took some shifting, but removed it, then started work properly.

Inc manual removal, this is roughly what I removed..

MBAM - 872 infections - Trojans galore, false security etc. Funnily enough, NO mywebsearch!.
Hitmanpro - 10 x viruses (inc 1 bootkit), 268 traces
Hijack this - Removed 45 different items. BHO's all over, toolbars, redirects..
Hosts file - Even using Bryce's tool of the week, this was still corrupt. Had to clean this manually. A lot of the entries were google related. There were quite a few 'adult' listed sites mentioned. (The laptop belongs to a 16yr old teen).
Autoruns - Removed 21 items
Process Explorer - Removed 18 items.

I was >< close to telling my client, a N&P would be the best result, but thought I'm going to do my best and get this thing back up and running perfectly again, without resorting to the n&p. To be honest, a n&p would of been quicker to complete than the removal, and would of earned me more. (I charge flat rate). He paid £45 for the virus removal, compared to £85 for the n&p.

Client extremely happy, i'm happy, happy days