When should you start charging them money? If I was a plumber, they wouldn’t expect me to fix their shit for free every couple weeks. In the last week I have:
fixed FOUR! registries
formatted and installed XP on one machine
replaced drivers that one person tried to update & destroyed
diagnosed battery-charging error
fixed outlook settings fucked by user
moved address book between different email clients
et cetera…
all relatively mundane shit, but it takes time out of my day to do this bullshit over and over. On one machine, I just set everything up properly and locked them out of Administrator functions hoping to get a break for a month or two.
It depends I guess. My dad owns his own buisness working with computers (all different aspects) and he doesn’t charge me or any of the siblings when stuff needs fixed.
But if we are having a problem say at the fire station with somthing he won’t help unless they are paying which I can understand.
it’s not that i really want the money, it’s that i’m sick of being bothered.
when i say, “don’t open emails that look suspicious. don’t click on anything that ever pops up.” they open emails about “money from Dubai” and click pop-ups that say “you have spyware! click here to get rid of it.”
i’m about to tell everyone to take their shit to best buy.
charging family is bullshit… comeon… my job is to deal with bullshit, ontop of dealing with other peoples personal bullshit, i deal with my family’s bullshit too… and my grandpa even takes it a step further and blames ME for his computer being fucked up… “well, it worked until last time you were here”…
sending them to best buy is even worse than taking 100 bucks off them and telling them to reboot and go home. best buy or… ‘the geek squad’ is a total fucking rip off…
fuck best buy
and fuck working on peoples computers.
suck it up and do your family a favor… .just remind them “best buy would be charging you $110 an hour for this garbage”
I work on my family’s shit often enough that I just ghost their system when I have it for the 2nd or 3rd time, and that makes 4, 5, and 6th time alot easier. You will see a repeating trend in some people…
I would never charge my family money to fix computer problems. But I can’t think of a time where they haven’t offered me money either…
I don’t necessarily even want the money… but some fucking cookies, or lunch, or some kind of consideration would be nice for the virtual Herpes their machines have become to me…
Always charge. Set a precident or you’ll be FUCKED. All of my friends and family know I’m good with Computers and Cars. It’s like if anything breaks for any of them I get a phone call.
When you get back what you paid for the car new. Its pretty impressive, especially since it allowed me to pay for a new toy in full and have cash in the bank…
