Consumer Electronics Home PC help

[Bunk Moreland]

Theres a few of these around... Geeks To You, other franchises and small businesses...

Anybody had any experience with them? It seems like the biggest rort around! (OK, Chrisco excluded)

Went round to the olds to see they have a new computer, and they got one of these blokes out to set it up.

$180 an hour!

He’s deadset plugged a couple of colour-coded cables in and pressed the power button. And maybe downloaded and installed a couple of programs.

I’m no programmer but ffs, anybody who has spent a working life using a PC can do all this stuff.

He’s got the business sticker on the side of their computer, offered to come out and set up a new printer (!) when they need to. Callout fee and hourly rate of course!

If there’s any problems he can’t fix I imagine he just gets on the phone to the software / hardware tech support.

Lovely bloke apparently. Predictably, has no qualifications - just a former accountant. Arrived in his near new C63!

Speaking to parents, all their friends have used him. It’s quite the industry apparently.

Obviously I told them never to call him again and just let me know if anything “goes wrong” (which will probably require me to press Ctrl-Alt-Del to fix).

All seems to be aimed at the older generation of people who have a breakdown at the sight of a computer.

Seems an amazing business considering how easy computers are to use now.

 

[kaiserchief13]

Lol $180 - sign me up please

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Lol $180 - sign me up please

Ha that’s what I said. Might have to start a business.

 

[Shane Sheridan]

Didn't look like this did he?

 

[ep2018]

Mate told me once they charged him $150 to install windows 7. I told him I can do it in my sleep... should have gone to me instead...

 

[Bunk Moreland]

View attachment 448070

Didn't look like this did he?

Who dat

 

[Shane Sheridan]

Who dat

Patron Saint of Big Footy.
Man who brings Christcomas joy to bogans and financial illiterates all across the land
I present to you Richard 'laughing all the way to the bank' Bradley

 

[Spongebob]

 

[GreyCrow]

Y2K bought many a geek new houses

 

[Gralin]

These days if you have a working mobile phone you can pretty much goggle your way to a working PC.
There are some things a second working computer is needed for to get you out of the shit but it's really not $180 an hour hard stuff for home users

 

[Jimmybob]

Feel like almost all morals would have to go out the window to do that as a "career."

 

[Xtreme]

Lol $180 - sign me up please

I used to do easy computer things for free. Then people got greedy wasting my time with simple stuff... so I figured I'd get rewarded for my efforts!

 

[Scotland]

I've always thought an IT business aimed only at baby boomers would be a money spinner. Kind of like if you were a plumber and all you did was rescue iPhones from behind toilets. $200 for 5 minutes work and 1/10th of a tube of silicone, a-thankyou. Old people don't want hard drive partitioning and flux capacitor cleaning and whatever else IT nerds do. They just want to play Solitaire and get angry at News Corp websites.

It would be an infuriating job if you tried to engage them. I used to help my parents at home with IT stuff and they had zero tolerance for even the slightest technical term. All they wanted was things to work without interruption. You could pretty much have free rein to say 'yep I'm going to do some things, it'll take half an hour so go have a cup of tea' then spend your time clicking 'yes' to everything and playing on your phone.

 

[William Wonka]

You would have to pay me more than $180 to spend an hour explaining anything computer related to old people.

 

[Frank Bunn]

My mother used to go to the local library to use the internet. She set up an email account. I got one message and replied to it which she didn't receive. That was the end of that.

Then she bought a tablet and paid for fast broadband to her house - but, despite many hours on the phone with myself and my sister, she has been unable to connect to it.

I can understand why this is a thing.

 

[GreyCrow]

My mother used to go to the local library to use the internet. She set up an email account. I got one message and replied to it which she didn't receive. That was the end of that.

Then she bought a tablet and paid for fast broadband to her house - but, despite many hours on the phone with myself and my sister, she has been unable to connect to it.

I can understand why this is a thing.

Hey brother

 

[radiojake]

was hoping the OP was wanting to know how to be politically correct at home

 

[Bunk Moreland]

You would have to pay me more than $180 to spend an hour explaining anything computer related to old people.

I think explaining anything would be counterproductive. You just arrive, click yes a bunch of times and leave with hundreds of dollars. Amazing.

They seem to charge the same as a qualified tradesman to do stuff you don’t need any knowledge, apprenticeship or even training for.

 

[Papa Juggs]

When your techie arrives in a Merc you can be sure you're getting overcharged more than a little.

 

[Spongebob]

My father was using his computer well into his 90s. For email and basic word processing his was fine.

However, anything more complex became a challenge. He would get us to explain things step by step. Which he would write, not always accurately, into a notebook. Then he would not be able to find the correct page, or even notebook, and the process would start all over again.

My older brother does not have the patience of a saint that I possess. But he lived a few kms away, and I am on the other side of the country. Old people do not like expensive phone calls.

 

[William Wonka]

I think explaining anything would be counterproductive. You just arrive, click yes a bunch of times and leave with hundreds of dollars. Amazing.

They seem to charge the same as a qualified tradesman to do stuff you don’t need any knowledge, apprenticeship or even training for.

They would want it explained.

Also $180 is not that exorbitant to have someone come to you for a one off job (especially for a job that DOES require knowledge and quite a lot of it).
If anyone is offering to come to your house for under $100 to do anything at all chances are they are casing the place.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

They would want it explained.

Also $180 is not that exorbitant to have someone come to you for a one off job (especially for a job that DOES require knowledge and quite a lot of it).
If anyone is offering to come to your house for under $100 to do anything at all chances are they are casing the place.

Rubbish. Setting up a computer and turning it on takes all the skills and knowledge of a cleaner.

Do you pay a cleaner $180?

 

[Cleavy]

If anyone is offering to come to your house for under $100 to do anything at all chances are they are casing the place.

Airtasker?

 

[William Wonka]

Rubbish. Setting up a computer and turning it on takes all the skills and knowledge of a cleaner.

Do you pay a cleaner $180?

You could not do 'Geeks 2 you' type work without at least a fair amount of computer knowledge.
Call a plumber to change a washer and their time costs as much as if you get them to install a new septic tank.

Any job that people find 'beyond them' commands a premium.
Its only jobs people consider 'beneath them' that pay SFA. Which is terribly unfair as cleaning etc. would be an absolute campaigner of a job and deserves a better paycheck.

If you have the skills then I would recommend stop complaining about people making a mint and start competing with them.

 

[William Wonka]

Airtasker?

Correction.
Casing the place or an Indian part time student/ part time sex criminal.