1

Hey everyone I just wanted to hear some input on how people handle “personal” requests from users about fixing things for their home computers. I have fixed personal problems from the highest up people in my organization to plenty of the lower areas.

When do you say no? When do you say yes? Certainly when a VP asks me to fix their computer that has apparently “crashed” I will do it no problem, but what about those users who just complain about having a slow machine and they want to bring it in on a workday when you could very well be busy.

I’ve found that I can rarely give you a forcast of how busy my day will be the day before. Oh sure let me drop the things I have to do for the organization to take care of your slow machine!

On the other hand I always provide consulting provided they can somewhat follow my instructions and input.

15 Spice ups
2

We do that a lot here. We also run into the same issues you’ve described. When it gets busy though, work always comes first. Especially in our case when it involves patient care. The employees seem to understand this and they’re willing to wait longer. I hate making excuses, but it seems to work fine.

3

I certainly have no problem with it everynow and then theres a daunting new problem that comes in but work takes priority of course.

4

After doing this for so many years, I’ve come to fully believe in the mantra “you touch it, you own it” so I try not to do this too much.

I’ll install personal software on a case-by-case basis, but I’ll always try to attach a caveat that if it breaks, fixing it will be waaaaaay at the bottom of my list of things to do, and my users generally understand. However, certain users in the past haven’t been so receptive to my exit clause :slight_smile: It just all depends on the situation and the user, I think.

5

Usually worth it to see the amount of spyware some people will put up with on their computer.

1 Spice up
6

My policy is “If it is not used for company work then I will be happy to work on it - AFTER WORK HOURS” And since I do this kind of stuff as a sideline to make some extra money, I charge a very reasonable fee for my labor. Have not had any grumbling about this set up, yet.

7

I have had some bad experiences - and some good. I had one guy accuse me of steeling his financial information after I fixed his personal computer for free. That was just a weee bit frustrating. I also had a nice woman take my wife and I out to eat for basically only defragging her hard drive.

My advise is to only do it when it will not interfere with work. Your boss will NOT understand if it becomes a problem, but most people do understand that work has to come first.

Also, don’t do it for just anybody. I should never have fixed that psyco’s computer who accused me of stealing his banking info. He was a jerk. On the other hand, I am a bad mechanic, and a mechanic with a broken computer is a good person to do a favor for! :slight_smile:

8

i tell the people where i work that i dont do house calls my father dose that and he charges $55 p/h it works well

9

We try and fix everything thats brought in, PC, laptop, PVR, PSP.

We always say it may get damaged further and its done out of works time.

Its a good opportunity to hone your skills on other peoples assets.

I always say no to people that ask for Microsoft apps/OS and direct them to openoffice etc.

Its good to have some credit when I need help from other people.

10

Greetings.

When i did IT for a single company, i would handle business computers because that was my job. If the company was owned by an individual or close enough, that owner may slip a personal box into the mix from time to time. Some owners would be cool about it and offer to pay me for the work. They would usually just have their business take care of parts. If they were not an owner, they were charged per hour, plus parts. If i worked on these at work, it was first with permission from my boss, even if the owner of the company was having me do the work.

Now that i have a business which handles numerous businesses computers and various systems, we see all the computer through the same shades … if we work on it, it is for a fee, be it a business box, owner’s box, or grunt’s box. All computers are equal in this regards.

11

If it is affecting them working, i will normally sort it out under work time however i will only go out to someone if: it is quicker to do it myself rather than spend hours on the phone to them or the problem is specific to their setup at home and cannot be recreated in the office.

Where to draw the line? software installs - no i cannot give you a copy of office to put on your daughter’s laptop for uni. old hardware - if their pc is clearly too old (like a win98 machine with xp upgrade but no hardware upgrades) there is no point in wasting my time. I normally point them to a £300 business class pc and give them pointers on what to go for from there. Sometimes if they will be working from home alot, they can wangle a rebate from us for the hardware as it is required for their role.

On occation users rellatives have problems which i am happy to sort for a small fee £20-£50 depending on the pain of the job but that is strictly out of hours.

12

consulting always seems like the easier route for me with the less favorable users, otherwise if its a user that i am somewhat friendly with i have no problem doing it. I’ve also had enough experience to be able to troubleshoot hardware problems with a person by having them describe the problems to me so when it comes time for me to fix them its a quick fix as i know what the process is to fix it already.

13

When I was first starting out (not too long ago), I was all to eager to earn the cash and reputation and to also get some experience and knowledge. Quickly you’ll find you need to pull back as the freebies and “real quick” jobs will take up more and more of your time and effort. So if you’re needing the cash and experience go for it, but I’d avoid doing it during work hours unless your boss is cool with it, and you’re normal duties are fairly light. I avoid it at all costs, if they want to bring in there system, I’ll take it home. If they need it fixed fast, on-site is best.

Jeremy was dead on too, make sure you’ve known the client awhile and have a rapport so they don’t turn on you; should things get difficult you will be responsible and they’ll let you know it. Also, don’t overstate your qualifications, if they need you to clean out a possible infection and you’ve only done 10-20, let them know your capabilities.

Provided your completely confident you can fix the problem or at least diagnose it in a timely manner, I say go for it, and make sure they tell their friends :slight_smile:

Couple rules I try to follow.

  1. Freelance/Moonlighting work is charged roughly double my daytime rate. ex) $20/hour = $20/half hour. You’ll undoubtedly spend as much time fixing the problem as you do explaining, communicating, and following up. If you’re a bit inexperienced maybe 1.5x

  2. Family gets 2 free incidents a year, provided it’s family you like, and friends get 1 incident. I’m not a gold digger, but my time is valuable to me, and obviously them.

  3. Fix only the problem they want you to fix. If you see a bunch of optimizations and general cleanups are needed, offer to do them after.

  4. Keep phone conversations brief unless they’re interested in remote training and consultation. Again, you’ll find people take a mile when you give them an inch.

Hope that helps.

14

Just say no. Unless its the company owner, then they own you, so its ok. I’ve tried all of the different methods, consulting, afterhours, working them in during the day, etc. and eventually you’re going to get a bad situation. Like hard disk crashes while you’re testing it, losing all their non-backed up data. Or so virus-ridden that cleaning it hoses it permanently. Most users’ home computers are old, slow, and terribly neglected. If you charge per hour, you’ll be charging them WAY more than the computer is worth.

If you want to do it, then make sure you give them the disclaimer up front - back up your data, and there’s no guarantees that its fixable. If you’re charging, you might want to discuss a cut-off point with them. Where you’ll stop at x amount.

I tell them that I hate computers. I only work here for the $$ ;-D. When I clock out, I don’t want to see another broken computer till I clock back in.

15

I just tell them to to go ask my boss. If he is ok with it then so am I. That is of course when I get time to do it. Some have taken their pc’s back before I had a chance to look at them because I was just too busy that week.

16

This is a difficult one, basically i will do anything i can to help anyone in our office, my advice is free, but if it is requests to fix, format, clean ect it has to have no affect on my worktime.

If a director comes to you and asks you to fix his machine you can hardly say no, do you treat users the same?? if you dont have time, you dont have time and thats it, if it means out of hours work for their personal gain then i charge a small fee.

Helping users/managers is generally part of the job, i quite enjoy it, sometimes i refuse to help because formatting a machine - re-installing windows - drivers - software and restoring data will take up too much of my personal time and i do have a life and kids! :slight_smile:

take each request with its merits, if you can do it they will usually offer money for your time anyway

17

I only do it for senior management or really good friends/family.

It does no harm to know how much p0rn has been stored on your boss’s home pc :slight_smile:

18

Policy is: Bring the machine in, I’ll take it home and work on it when I’m not getting paid by someone else to do work for them.

I don’t really mind as most of the time it’s really simple issues like updates that need applied, general cleanup etc that don’t require a lot of head melting.

Usually, I don’t get cash for my ‘extra-curricular’ activity as I’m generally too polite to ask for it for small jobs.

I do get an awful lot of good whiskey though, which is really appreciated.

19

I always played it by ear when people have asked for help with personal machines. If I like the person (or they’re a big cheese) I’ll do the work and mention “a couple of bottles of wine” as they hand it over. If you don’t ask you don’t get I say. I always did it at home or out of hours in the office though unless it was quiet (which it rarely is). If I don’t like the person I’ll just make a excuse. It might be worth having a word with you manager and asking him/her to send out a memo about it not being policy to fix none work machines. You can then still do it if you feel like it or if not you have the old “my nasty, evil boss won’t let me- I would have done otherwise” routine.

20

I hate doing it, but I am a girl who can’t say no :frowning: It bites you on the ass, though - I’ve been off sick for the last two weeks, get back in today and have a user asking if I had a chance to look at his laptop while I was off. If I was in a position to do that, I’d have been at work :frowning: Also, I’ve formatted and reinstalled windows on the same machine for the same person countless times, each time it comes back, the problem is the same - limewire is on machine, huge download folder, machine is riddled with viruses. They act like it’s my fault that they have to keep coming back with it, when I’ve warned them each and every time about illegal downloading messing up their machines. I’ll do it at work if it’s the boss or something like a virus scan which I can leave running away in the background while I work on something else, otherwise I tend to do it at home. I never ask for and rarely get any form of payment for my troubles.

My other pet hate is when people come to me at lunch time and ask about their home machines - just because it’s personal for them, doesn’t mean I want to spend my lunch troubleshooting their home issues - it’s still work for me!!