Homebuilt System Pricing- All system builders unite

[clooney2291]

I was just kind of curious how much everyone here charges customers to build them a PC. Im just curious if I am charging to much or not charging enough.

Everyone that knows my computers say I dont charge enough but when I shoot a new customer a price their look makes me think I'm charging too much.

I do what most everyone else here does and I buy 100% of my parts thru Newegg and charge a $50 US dollar labor fee and thats it. I install the OS of their choice and download all of the current updates at the time of build. I add just enough free software(Avira,Mozilla,Adobe Reader..etc) to get them going. I dont overclock for anyone but myself or my closest friends so the parts I buy have to be fast from the start.

So am I charging too much or not enough??

With todays economy I am having a hard time meeting everyones budget while building a PC that I can trust. Most everyday people think that a PC is a PC and they can pick up a $300 Emachine at Walmart. They also do not understand that mating the right chipset with the right processor along with memory gains you every ounce of speed you can squeeze.

I am just curious how others go about this.

Any thoughts??

 

[aevm]

I remember a poster saying he charges US$ 150, a few weeks ago. I don't know if that included a bit of overclocking or not.

In my city (in Canada) most computer shops assemble PCs for $50, give or take a bit, but they also make profits on selling the parts.

Of course, in this horrible economy even $50 sounds like a lot, but it's actually awfully close to minimum wage if you're spending a whole day looking for updates/installing/testing for them. Are you also providing support for that $50? You should have a written contract specifying support details and who deals with RMAs and so on.

 

[clooney2291]

As far as the support goes, they usually bring it back to me if something goes wrong with it. I will RMA anything that needs it but most of my customers destroy their computers with programs like Limewire so mainly they are just OS reinstalls.

 

[shabaa]

In this economy everyone is looking for lower prices so there has to be some trade offs.... Take a lesson from the phone company..... have multiple "tiers" of systems (and support) price it accordingly..... if you "stamp them out" at a reasonable price. If you want to get ahead of the curve of the "limewire issue" then do yourself a favor and put an invisible partition on the hard drive like many of the big boys do and reinstall from the partition. I use Acronis disc image and have had great success with it. It has cut down the re-install time considerably. All I have to do is do the program updates and viola! it is done. Too bad their stuff is not there but that is the price of ignorance..... You can also offer to "teach" them safe downloading and surfing practices..... For $$$ as well. I have done this and the limewire downloaders that I have taught have far fewer visits and it has provided a decent form of revenue.

 

[clooney2291]

Well, seems like I might be doing too much for nothing. When I know a computer is too jacked up to fix, I normally pull the drive, grab all of their documents, pics, videos and transfer them to a network storage drive. Reinstall OS and transfer thier files back to it. Maybe I should be charging for file recovery as well???