Assuming an annual contract could be arranged to avoid abuse and parts were reasonably priced, how much would the not all that tech saavy dopers pay monthly for a carry in service to fix your home computer.
For example:
$10/month, all repair labor covered, additional machines $5/mo more, turnaround times probably 3-5 days. Parts still cost extra but assume they are reasonably priced say matching newegg. I was also pondering not having an additional charge per machine but maybe having something akin to a copay, say $10 per machine checked in. With a max of 4 machines per subscriber.
Assuming I could get a couple thousand subscribers, I could see something like this as a baseline business. $10K a month would cover all my basic expenses and staff.
I’m figuring that the average household really only has a couple significant problems a year thus probably ends up being that they pay on average $30-$40/hr for the work done plus parts.
Offer reasonable priced upcharges for subscribers for a fast turnaround (48 hours $45), onsite( $35/hr), or pickup/delivery (say $10-$15).
I am kinda looking at medical insurance as a model, the nice thing being, a computer no matter how messed up can only require 4-5 hours work to fix and alot of it like windows reloads/virus scans can be multitasked.
So what do you say dopers?
#1 Would you subscribe to such a service?
#2 What do you think a reasonable monthly fee for such a service would be?
I would be focusing on functionality issues, I do alot of doc backups here and home users with that much data are very, very, rare. We can also easily insert conditions like first 10GB of backed up data are included + small fee per DVD worth of extra data.
Also things like backups and restore require minimal attention, just bench space while it happens. So a tech can fire up a backup/reload and go do something else for 30 min.
When you do a repair, do people seem to expect to see you again any time within the next year? I can understand that you can probably look at what a user has done to mung up a machine and you would expect to see them again to clean up the same mess they got themselves in to, but don’t the expect that once the Computer Man has come and gone, the machine is super awesome and it can’t possibly be fucked up again?
I can’t imagine convincing people that yeah they are idiots and they will probably need your services sometime again soon.
Also, if I was paying a subscription for something I’d be pretty pissed to think that I am put in the “wait 3-5 days” queue. I’d expect to be paying for a service where you came and got me fixed up hours after I called. I know a bunch of people who pay $15 a YEAR for a service and they go apeshit when their thing is messed up for a couple of hours…
Well #1 I have a little angle that targets selling it to people before they have a problem, considering how often BB and the like come up with a way to charge $300 for a windows reload, case cleaning, tuneup (after the reload :rolleyes: ) and a ram upgrade), I figure that it could easily get a $120 a year especially if things like hardware upgrades were included if you buy our parts.
I also have quite a few repeat offenders. As far as the 3-5 days, that happens plenty of times now when we get swamped paying full price. If people wanted some kind of immediate response subscription service you would be looking at more like $100/month.