Any PC repair people here?
Discussion
I'm about to embark on doing some self employed PC repair/upgrade work for domestic customers.
I've come to an arrangement with a local newsagents to be the drop off and pick up point for customers.
Does anybody have any hints or helpful experience of problems I might encounter and any good advertising ideas?
I'm based in a small town with a catchment of about 10,000 people and to start with I'm going to use posters in the local shops and perhaps a leaflet drop around town.
I've come to an arrangement with a local newsagents to be the drop off and pick up point for customers.
Does anybody have any hints or helpful experience of problems I might encounter and any good advertising ideas?
I'm based in a small town with a catchment of about 10,000 people and to start with I'm going to use posters in the local shops and perhaps a leaflet drop around town.
rsv gone! said:
I'd have thought your local rag would be more effective. Imagine what your customers' first action would be if their PC wasn't working.
Probably find lots of others competing in there, though.
I wanted to check the response locally before committing to the newspaper, as most of the circulation for that covers a larger town 15 miles away where I won't be operating for the time being.Probably find lots of others competing in there, though.
The only competition I'd have is in that town, which as I said, is 15 miles away.
The area I live in is rural and not very technologically aware. Many of the households have PCs for their kids for internet use etc, rather than knowledgable people who could fix their own.
My USPs will be convencience, speed of turnaround and transparency of service; in that my pricing is very clear, I won't be profiting from parts supplies and full explanations of the faults and ways to avoid them recurring will be given.
PC repair is full of people doing it now, personally i think without a retail shop it's not worth the hassle. I worked in that industry for over 10 years and you WILL get hasle, trust me. Part supply is where you make the money-people don't like paying for labour, you need good trade supplies for components and good stock as people want it doing yesterday.
I have a mate who does this and also custom builds PC's.
One of his big selling points is, whilst he may not be as cheap as Dell, PC world, etc. (albiet by only £40-50)he emphasises the fact that you get a personnel service and will repair any problems as soon as they occur in your own home.
I think alot of people like this element rather than phoning a "help" line at ££ a minute, trudging down the store to try and get it repaired or waiting in for your PC to be delivered.
(He has built up a good customer base and makes quiet a good living)
One of his big selling points is, whilst he may not be as cheap as Dell, PC world, etc. (albiet by only £40-50)he emphasises the fact that you get a personnel service and will repair any problems as soon as they occur in your own home.
I think alot of people like this element rather than phoning a "help" line at ££ a minute, trudging down the store to try and get it repaired or waiting in for your PC to be delivered.
(He has built up a good customer base and makes quiet a good living)
Edited by Malh001 on Thursday 10th July 10:36
Dave_ST220 said:
PC repair is full of people doing it now, personally i think without a retail shop it's not worth the hassle. I worked in that industry for over 10 years and you WILL get hasle, trust me. Part supply is where you make the money-people don't like paying for labour, you need good trade supplies for components and good stock as people want it doing yesterday.
I'm not looking for this to be a full time job at the moment, so I'm not looking to do large volumes.With the proliferation of cheap parts on the internet, a business model relying on margin from parts themselves is not going to make any decent money at low volume levels for two reasons; one, I would envisage most of the problems to be software related and not require replacement parts and two, people can source their own parts cheaply via the internet.
If I was to charge a high enough premium to make that work, people would soon see they could have bought the same parts more cheaply and might begin to resent paying higher figures for me to do what they could have done themselves.
What I would rather do, is to sell the services people can't do for themselves and make my margin on that- my time and expertise. Any parts required will be supplied at my cost and the customer will get a copy of my invoice for the part to prove it. I believe that and other measures will help people appreciate the honesty and service, in a small community such as ours, that will help build word of mouth.
I am not going to be suffering the same kind of competition I would if I was in a larger town, as the nearest shopping town is 15 miles away.
To cap it all, setting this up and running it is going to cost me less than the price of a good night out. If it work well I'll continue and look to ways of expanding, if it doesn't work out I've lost nothing at all.
What I really wanted were any pointers as to decent business ideas specific to this industry or experience of pitfalls to avoid.
We used to do what you are doing, but we got out of the domestic market last year - it was just too much hassle for too little reward. Your customers will want everything done now and for nothing. They would rather pay a shop 15 miles away 50p less for a part than get it from you, who has it in stock right now and are next door.
They will call you at all times of the day and night and at first you will respond to them, but you will soon get fed up with answering the phone at 9pm to someone who thinks it's a real emergency that their internet has disconnected so they can't stream the latest episode of Hollyoaks.
We switched to 90% B2B and haven't looked back. Businesses know that if they call you they will have to pay and also they only tend to operate 9 to 5.
I'm not saying don't do it - we did have some fun, but in the end the rewards did not match the effort on the domestic side.
Also have a look at joining something like Brigantia, a collection of over 1000 like minded people, who have some good arrangements with the main disties. PM me if you need more info. You can see more about us from the link in my profile. Good luck.
They will call you at all times of the day and night and at first you will respond to them, but you will soon get fed up with answering the phone at 9pm to someone who thinks it's a real emergency that their internet has disconnected so they can't stream the latest episode of Hollyoaks.
We switched to 90% B2B and haven't looked back. Businesses know that if they call you they will have to pay and also they only tend to operate 9 to 5.
I'm not saying don't do it - we did have some fun, but in the end the rewards did not match the effort on the domestic side.
Also have a look at joining something like Brigantia, a collection of over 1000 like minded people, who have some good arrangements with the main disties. PM me if you need more info. You can see more about us from the link in my profile. Good luck.
Sorry but i think it's a bad idea, selling anything at cost makes people wary that you wil be making up for it elsewhere, ie, high labour costs. A bit like the MOT places that do MOT's for £10, they ALWAYS find something to fix. Good luck though, i was just talking out loud of my experiences which may or may not be the norm. As for advertising, your main problem is word of mouth is king,so catch 22 at the start. Paper adverts don't tend to work(again from my experience), yellow pages will get you some punters but the majority of people find us(IT/comms industry) via the internet, sadly your punters may not be able to find you if their PC is broken! I'd still get a website up though.
Thanks for the info.
Just to clarify- I'm not going to be offering a typical PC shop service supplying parts to people to fit themselves. It is literally just a service for people who have a computer problem and can't fix it for themselves.
People will drop the PC at the shop I have the agreement with (which is open very early to 8pm) and I will collect it. The standard fee will be £35 for diagnosis and repair, if it can be done in the first hour. If it needs parts, these will be charged at cost on top of that.
I'm aiming to turn around software only problems within 24 hours and hardware ones with 48.
If necessary I can also visit people's homes, too.
If I was doing more than 10 jobs a week I'd be surprised.
Just to clarify- I'm not going to be offering a typical PC shop service supplying parts to people to fit themselves. It is literally just a service for people who have a computer problem and can't fix it for themselves.
People will drop the PC at the shop I have the agreement with (which is open very early to 8pm) and I will collect it. The standard fee will be £35 for diagnosis and repair, if it can be done in the first hour. If it needs parts, these will be charged at cost on top of that.
I'm aiming to turn around software only problems within 24 hours and hardware ones with 48.
If necessary I can also visit people's homes, too.
If I was doing more than 10 jobs a week I'd be surprised.
arcturus said:
We used to do what you are doing, but we got out of the domestic market last year - it was just too much hassle for too little reward. Your customers will want everything done now and for nothing. They would rather pay a shop 15 miles away 50p less for a part than get it from you, who has it in stock right now and are next door.
They will call you at all times of the day and night and at first you will respond to them, but you will soon get fed up with answering the phone at 9pm to someone who thinks it's a real emergency that their internet has disconnected so they can't stream the latest episode of Hollyoaks.
We switched to 90% B2B and haven't looked back. Businesses know that if they call you they will have to pay and also they only tend to operate 9 to 5.
I'm not saying don't do it - we did have some fun, but in the end the rewards did not match the effort on the domestic side.
Also have a look at joining something like Brigantia, a collection of over 1000 like minded people, who have some good arrangements with the main disties. PM me if you need more info. You can see more about us from the link in my profile. Good luck.
Yep i'd agree with that, B2B has much bigger challenges for much bigger rewards, Joe public is OK to sell to but a right PITA to support. Having said that i do find it enjoyable when Joe public calls me on a Saturday when i'm having a pint to discuss an ADSL extension or whatever, most start the conversation off with an appology for calling on a weekend!!They will call you at all times of the day and night and at first you will respond to them, but you will soon get fed up with answering the phone at 9pm to someone who thinks it's a real emergency that their internet has disconnected so they can't stream the latest episode of Hollyoaks.
We switched to 90% B2B and haven't looked back. Businesses know that if they call you they will have to pay and also they only tend to operate 9 to 5.
I'm not saying don't do it - we did have some fun, but in the end the rewards did not match the effort on the domestic side.
Also have a look at joining something like Brigantia, a collection of over 1000 like minded people, who have some good arrangements with the main disties. PM me if you need more info. You can see more about us from the link in my profile. Good luck.
Dave_ST220 said:
Sorry but i think it's a bad idea, selling anything at cost makes people wary that you wil be making up for it elsewhere, ie, high labour costs. A bit like the MOT places that do MOT's for £10, they ALWAYS find something to fix. Good luck though, i was just talking out loud of my experiences which may or may not be the norm. As for advertising, your main problem is word of mouth is king,so catch 22 at the start. Paper adverts don't tend to work(again from my experience), yellow pages will get you some punters but the majority of people find us(IT/comms industry) via the internet, sadly your punters may not be able to find you if their PC is broken! I'd still get a website up though.
I just want to emphasise the point that I live in a town of 3000 people with a total catchment of 10,000. It's a tiny community, one which wouldn't justify a PC repair 'shop'. Word of mouth will be a big driver and, considering the small size of the town, I can put a poster in literally every shop and a leaflet through every door for very little cost. It doesn't take much effort to get noticed here.
Dave_ST220 said:
Part supply is where you make the money
Sorry, have to disagree there. Margins on parts are wafer thin in this business - 10% at most, except on a few odd items like cables. In fact in some cases it is cheaper for me to buy retail from ebuyer than through a trade distie, that's how screwed up this business is. And don't even think about selling genuine Apple stuff - 3% markup at most!!We closed our retail shop and went office based, just cos we were making all our money from services, not parts and so the shop was dragging us down.
10 Pence Short said:
I just want to emphasise the point that I live in a town of 3000 people with a total catchment of 10,000. It's a tiny community, one which wouldn't justify a PC repair 'shop'.
Our town is 3000 people - It supports a PC repair shop. You'd be surprised!!In fact there were 2 till we closed ours.
Edited by arcturus on Thursday 10th July 11:40
arcturus said:
Dave_ST220 said:
Part supply is where you make the money
Sorry, have to disagree there. Margins on parts are wafer thin in this business - 10% at most, except on a few odd items like cables. In fact in some cases it is cheaper for me to buy retail from ebuyer than through a trade distie, that's how screwed up this business is. And don't even think about selling genuine Apple stuff - 3% markup at most!!We closed our retail shop and went office based, just cos we were making all our money from services, not parts and so the shop was dragging us down.
Edited by Dave_ST220 on Thursday 10th July 11:43
Dave_ST220 said:
But if the town is so small how big will your customer base be? I don't mean to piss on your bonfire & it really depends on what you want this to be/become? part time hobby or business of the future?
I have a daytime job and I expect to keep it. This is going to start as something I do in my free time at very low volumes. If it builds from there I'll develop it, if it isn't worth the effort I'll stop doing it. It won't have lost me money.There isn't a local service but I know anecdotally that there is a need. I'm not convinced there is enugh business to support me full time, so doing this will give me a chance to suck it and see.
It is more than likely that I'll know most of my customers personally.
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