Pricing

[smiba]

Simple title, I think it fits well.

I've been having some issues with my pricing and philosophy on it.

Right now I'm asking €200 No Cure, No Pay. Fixed fee for macbook motherboard repair. I feel like this increases trust with the customer as I can say there are no hidden fees. Its going to be €200 or its going to be €0.
My pricing does include tax, parts and labour, the only thing excluded is non IC or non-motherboard parts. (Think about Battery, Display etc.). For this I charge a different price then the €200 but the customer will be notified before this and I wait for their answer. If they feel like its worth it, they'll have to pay upfront or if they don't think its worth it they can come pick it up free of charge

For shipping I ask the same price my post office asks, the shipping costs are always there when shipped. If i can't get it fixed the shipping costs still would need to be paid for.

The issue with this currently is that I've been receiving a /shit ton/ of fucked up motherboards. And I don't mean the "I dropped water over it and put it in rice for 2 weeks" kind of fucked up. But I mean the ones where other people have just tried to reflow everything and broke it all, or where there are just chips missing with/or pulled off pads.

Right now I have about a 15% rate of laptops where I have not found any prior repairs, which is a awful rate with an even more dramatic fix rate of only about 45% of all laptops that come in (*% taken from the last 3 months). I'm spending way more time then I want to share on these laptops before finding out someone destroyed some unfixable stuff


So I've been thinking about including a "diagnostic fee" (aka. scam fee...), I want to put this on a low amount of €29 and for that money I will actually take a honest look underneath the microscope with my multimeter for it.
Why €29? Because I feel like its enough to have people sending me motherboards they know are fucked to me because it will be free "so its worth another try", but its not enough to feel or be a real scam.
I hate charging diagnostic fees though, as it feels like asking a customer to pay for something you didn't fix and it could leave a bit of a bad memory about my company for customers. I take no pride in asking for money when the customer still doesn't go home with a working laptop. But right now its not working very well either..

Whats everyone's opinion on charging a diagnostic fee? Do you charge one? What are the costs you ask for repairs and/or diagnostic fees?

Cheers everyone

 

[dukefawks]

It mostly depends on where you are sourcing your repairs. I know you advertise on "marktplaats" which is to be honest the worst place to get any business, worse than Ebay by far.
The typical marktplaats person is looking for the cheapest repair so they go to Ali first, then to Mohamed, then to Farook and then to Ayad. After each of them has fucked up the board more and more they become desperate and finally decide that they want to pay the 200 and get the fucking thing fixed. Of course all help is too late and everything is FUBAR. If you are lucky there are still 3 screw holding the whole thing together and they came from a HP laptop.

I think it is fair to have a diagnostic fee if the board hes been pre fucked with or is a "turkenbak" as I call it. Ask if there were prior repair attempts and if any are present the no cure no pay option is not available.

 

[larossmann]

I am all for free estimate but if someone else put flux on it I am at the point of having non-refundable $100 just to look at it. This has little to do with pricing and more to do with the fact that you are soliciting business from the worst possible areas. You want to be the first person to look at something and you want to get it directly from a consumer.

 

[Gurmon]

I don't touch ANY preworked on board anymore. Its just not worth the head fuck. Im getting more macs than I can handle directly from customers, just by marketing my business correctly. I'm also charging top dollar for our repairs. In my area, there is just us and the Applestore. Who also refer customers directly to us.

Align yourself with a number of other computer shops, give them a decent rate and turn around.
Im also doing more work with insurance companies, who last year where not interested in component repairs. Now i'm getting them calling me asking for component repairs.
Its really just a case of moving closer to the source of where the machines are coming from and not relying on the scraps left by everyone else.

 

[G.Beard]

I tell the customer it's going to be a head-fuck and I don't really want to touch it and that IF I get it working I still can't be sure of all the possible fuck-ups caused by the last repair attempt. Because of this I will attempt to repair but there is NO WARRANTY... I'm not going to warranty someone else's mistakes. It could be a week or more to do the repair. That way it can be done when there is nothing better to do. They can accept that or just have their fucked machine back.

 

[peterfixit]

for me I charge 250-350 plus parts for 2012 and earlier, I charge 350-450 plus parts for 2013-late 2014 and a flat 450 plus parts for 2015-present. this is in AUD

 

[Nick]

honestly i'm getting fed up with non apple products for the same reason. boss wants to fix everything that comes in but to me it's a waste of time and often money. Idiots that bake laptop motherboards, paint remover on water damaged boards, air blasted GPUs when it was a fucking power rail mosfet... since electronics fixing is relatively a new thing around here (not many do that shit) i often get shit that people send to a chinese non tax-paying hole down the street, shit given to their "expert 16yo cousin that do fixin" or good old car chassis hot air gun. So now we are charging 30€ even to look at your shitty laptop cause it's not worth it. I rather take only one fixable job than wasting time on like five already fucked up jobs. And also fuck Android phones. I am all for home fixing shit but don't fucking cut the flat cable of your new LCD and super glue it in along the whole glass AND frame thinking it will magically fix it. God i hate half of my customers.....

oh and LYING customers are the fucking worst. We started taking pics of every shit that comes in and forcing customers to turn them on. Guy brings in laptop not booting. he says it is a virus or something and nothing else

 

[smiba]

Thanks everyone for your responses, sorry it took so long for me to respond. Weird week

I'll schedule myself some more time to work on my website, so I can eventually get my own advertisements posted in my local area. Right now I got the domain but no website running on it.
That marktplaats (Pretty much the dutch version of craigslist) is a horrible place to source repairs from is without doubt and I'll try to get away from that place as soon as possible, given that I get enough customers in other ways.

For now I've added the €29 fee, but it only will be applied to a repair if I was not informed prior of the repair that there were any attempts at it before.
Doing this will still give customers the full No Cure, No Pay option, given they were honest with me. And honesty shouldn't be hard

oh and LYING customers are the fucking worst.

I know right haha, most often they are even lying about the obvious. I still haven't forgotten about the time someone wanted me to repair their macbook because they dropped juice over it and later it "got on fire". Never had I seen a macbook that actually got on fire more then a few burned through components, so even if it actually did get on fire it would've been worth my time just to see it!

Guess what? Just normal corrosion and no issue at all, not a single burn on the motherboard. The keyboard was slightly melted though, but unless keyboards magically get on fire... I suspect a hair dryer.
Not sure why one would lie something that obvious, but he was nice to me so I didn't really make a point of it.