So I feel like I've been getting screwed my whole life now...

[teisjm]

Remeber that you pay for their time. not only the time it takes to unscrew, blow the dust away, and put back together, but also the time they use on the phone with you, the time they use taking the thing in question in, and getting it back to you.

And unless they looked at it, which as far as i udnerstand they didn't cause you would've been charged then, they cannot know, how long it'll take, it may be mroe than dust.

Dunno about this last part but it's a guess, they could ofc charge according to time, but that would leave them with lots of trouble, when there was a big problem, and they ended up spending so much time (=money) on it, that it owuld've been almost as costly to buy a new one.
So they might have a fixed price, and then amke up for the troublesome repairs with the easy cases like your dust.

 

[MattZero]

Remeber that you pay for their time. not only the time it takes to unscrew, blow the dust away, and put back together, but also the time they use on the phone with you, the time they use taking the thing in question in, and getting it back to you.

And unless they looked at it, which as far as i udnerstand they didn't cause you would've been charged then, they cannot know, how long it'll take, it may be mroe than dust.

Dunno about this last part but it's a guess, they could ofc charge according to time, but that would leave them with lots of trouble, when there was a big problem, and they ended up spending so much time (=money) on it, that it owuld've been almost as costly to buy a new one.
So they might have a fixed price, and then amke up for the troublesome repairs with the easy cases like your dust.

I edited the OP to address a lot of this. I know him personally, he's a friend who runs an all purpose repair shop. I brought my PS3 into him and showed him what it was doing and he said it was going to be at least $150 to fix and he didn't even open it up. I've always taken his estimates at face value because I've known him my whole life, so when he says at least $150 I always assumed it was because no matter what the problem was it was going to require that much time or parts. Now I find out that $150 was his base price for what would have taken him 15 minutes to do and I know if it would have been more difficult he would have charged me even more.

 

[CowboyfromHell666]

Its like when you buy a Computer. It will literally cost half as much if you do it yourself and make it out of parts.

Pretty much anything that is mechanical/technological will be overpriced.

I think the only reason they charge so much, is because of the cost to them to make the device, and they want to make a profit off of it. Not just regain the money they lost for making it and getting no profit.
I could be right, or wrong, but you are so right.

 

[teisjm]

Remeber that you pay for their time. not only the time it takes to unscrew, blow the dust away, and put back together, but also the time they use on the phone with you, the time they use taking the thing in question in, and getting it back to you.

And unless they looked at it, which as far as i udnerstand they didn't cause you would've been charged then, they cannot know, how long it'll take, it may be mroe than dust.

Dunno about this last part but it's a guess, they could ofc charge according to time, but that would leave them with lots of trouble, when there was a big problem, and they ended up spending so much time (=money) on it, that it owuld've been almost as costly to buy a new one.
So they might have a fixed price, and then amke up for the troublesome repairs with the easy cases like your dust.

I edited the OP to address a lot of this. I know him personally, he's a friend who runs an all purpose repair shop. I brought my PS3 into him and showed him what it was doing and he said it was going to be at least $150 to fix and he didn't even open it up. I've always taken his estimates at face value because I've known him my whole life, so when he says at least $150 I always assumed it was because no matter what the problem was it was going to require that much time or parts. Now I find out that $150 was his base price for what would have taken him 15 minutes to do and I know if it would have been more difficult he would have charged me even more.

Ok, seeing as you know him personally let me ask you this: Is he filthy rich? if he just seems to have an average income then he's prolly charging what he has to, in order to run his bussiness.

Forgot to add before, he doesn't put all the money in his pocket, he has to pay for the room/building he's working in, lease, heat water, electricity etc. For the tools he's using, for teh time he spends reporting earnings and taxes and stuff, or in case he doens't do it himself, for someone else to do it, he has to pay for insurance, and all sorts of otehr stuff. All that money has to come from somewhere too.

So unless you think he has more money than he deserves to have, based on what he does, you coudl easilly (and prolly correctly) assume, that he's really not overcharging.

 

[MattZero]

SNIP
Ok, seeing as you know him personally let me ask you this: Is he filthy rich? if he just seems to have an average income then he's prolly charging what he has to, in order to run his bussiness.

Forgot to add before, he doesn't put all the money in his pocket, he has to pay for the room/building he's working in, lease, heat water, electricity etc. For the tools he's using, for teh time he spends reporting earnings and taxes and stuff, or in case he doens't do it himself, for someone else to do it, he has to pay for insurance, and all sorts of otehr stuff. All that money has to come from somewhere too.

So unless you think he has more money than he deserves to have, based on what he does, you coudl easilly (and prolly correctly) assume, that he's really not overcharging.

He doesn't go hungry and he's the only guy in the area who does what he does. It's just that it took me only half an hour to remedy the problem. I had to go slow and carefully, because I had a shitty mutltitool and had to keep careful track of the screws and I haven't ever seen the inside of a ps3 so I had to make doubly sure where everything was so I could put it back. He's set up for this and has repaired hundreds of ps3's it would have taken him less than five minutes to open it up and blow it and five minutes to put it back together. I don't see the equivalent of $900 dollars an hour as justified. And when he does put actual work into something he charges even more. He has back to back business and for every item that comes in that he needs to get a part in and really do some difficult work he probably has 50 things that all take him three hours total.

If he charges the quote he gave me for the job I needed done as a flat rate for his time he would make 10 grand a day I can't believe his operating cost comes anywhere close to that.

 

[teisjm]

SNIP
Ok, seeing as you know him personally let me ask you this: Is he filthy rich? if he just seems to have an average income then he's prolly charging what he has to, in order to run his bussiness.

Forgot to add before, he doesn't put all the money in his pocket, he has to pay for the room/building he's working in, lease, heat water, electricity etc. For the tools he's using, for teh time he spends reporting earnings and taxes and stuff, or in case he doens't do it himself, for someone else to do it, he has to pay for insurance, and all sorts of otehr stuff. All that money has to come from somewhere too.

So unless you think he has more money than he deserves to have, based on what he does, you coudl easilly (and prolly correctly) assume, that he's really not overcharging.

snip...

If he charges the quote he gave me for the job I needed done as a flat rate for his time he would make 10 grand a day I can't believe his operating cost comes anywhere close to that.

Sure, if a costumer came in every 15 minutes with a PS3 with that problem.

My point is, don't look at what he makes for a single repair, look at his personal monthly income after everything bussiness related is paid off.
If his monthly sallery isn't grossly high compared to the job he does, then it's just what it takes to run such a bussiness, even though it may seem unfair to the consumer.

 

[MattZero]

snip...

If he charges the quote he gave me for the job I needed done as a flat rate for his time he would make 10 grand a day I can't believe his operating cost comes anywhere close to that.

Sure, if a costumer came in every 15 minutes with a PS3 with that problem.

My point is, don't look at what he makes for a single repair, look at his personal monthly income after everything bussiness related is paid off.
If his monthly sallery isn't grossly high compared to the job he does, then it's just what it takes to run such a bussiness, even though it may seem unfair to the consumer.

It really depends I guess. You have a point when someone brings in a $300 HDTV that needs to have a bunch of new circuits ordered in and soldered, he can only charge up to a certain worth of a new television but he puts in a lot of hours but on the other hand he tried to charge me 50% of the worth of a brand new and better version of my system for basically nothing. Whether or not he's truly making money hand over fist depends on his operating costs. Once he pays off the loans on his building and purchases all of his tools which he's definitely done by now his only operating cost is his heat/AC, whatever limited water bills you have for a single bathroom and advertisement on a couple billboards.

I just feel like the majority of the repairs I bring in take him very little time and he charges me a lot for them so even if he's making an average amount all together, he's made a huge profit off me.

 

[manaman]

Most likely the tech figured something else was the problem. Maybe a common failure point in the item.

Having worked as a tech all my working life I know that doing it yourself is only a path to bigger costs in the future.

On topic postage: Really I don't get why you feel ripped off OP, the guy was just charging for his specific expertise. If you didn't know how to fix it you could either have made the situation much worse by trying your hand at repairing it or you wouldn't have been able to fix it at all. People who can design logos don't go to a logo designing company and complain they feel ripped off because they can just do it themselves.

I just feel like $300 an hour is a little excessive of an estimate for taking out about fifteen screws and blowing. I know he didn't know what was wrong, maybe it needed something else or a replacement fan, but I also know for a fact he wouldn't have lowered the price when he found out I had a dust clog. I'm not saying detailed technical knowledge isn't valuable or isn't worth money but there's a difference between say taking apart the heat sink and just blowing and he should scale his prices accordingly.

The other guy is correct. As far as your statement that he wouldn't have lowered the price when he found out the "true" cause I have to wonder about that. And yes I used quotes on true, just cause it helped for now I am not ready to believe it was the underlying cause, I had a brand new PS3 nearly catch fire, there is some heating issues with them.

How do you know he wouldn't have cut you a break? You never gave him a change to find that out. If the only trust you have in this person is the trust that he will rip you off why did you ever bother taking anything to him in the first place?

I charge in 15 minute increments depending on the work. The tech work varies depending what exactly it is. Anywhere from $75 an hour to $200 an hour. To crack a case open and look inside can run some customers $150 all by itself.

I also fail to see how he was charging $300 an hour. You are only getting that number based on the fact that it took you half an hour to do what you did. As I said before he most likely was pricing based on past experience, and probably gave two hours labor in the price as $75-85 an hour is fairly standard for most tech work.

Last, quotes and estimates are different, I saw you use both terms. A quote is a fixed price for the repair. An estimate is more along the lines of what work you authorize, laws in states say the tech can't exceed the estimate without approval from the owner.

 

[MattZero]

Most likely the tech figured something else was the problem. Maybe a common failure point in the item.

Having worked as a tech all my working life I know that doing it yourself is only a path to bigger costs in the future.

SNIP

The other guy is correct. As far as your statement that he wouldn't have lowered the price when he found out the "true" cause I have to wonder about that. And yes I used quotes on true, just cause it helped for now I am not ready to believe it was the underlying cause, I had a brand new PS3 nearly catch fire, there is some heating issues with them.

How do you know he wouldn't have cut you a break? You never gave him a change to find that out. If the only trust you have in this person is the trust that he will rip you off why did you ever bother taking anything to him in the first place?

I charge in 15 minute increments depending on the work. The tech work varies depending what exactly it is. Anywhere from $75 an hour to $200 an hour. To crack a case open and look inside can run some customers $150 all by itself.

I also fail to see how he was charging $300 an hour. You are only getting that number based on the fact that it took you half an hour to do what you did. As I said before he most likely was pricing based on past experience, and probably gave two hours labor in the price as $75-85 an hour is fairly standard for most tech work.

Last, quotes and estimates are different, I saw you use both terms. A quote is a fixed price for the repair. An estimate is more along the lines of what work you authorize, laws in states say the tech can't exceed the estimate without approval from the owner.

I'm reasonably sure that it was heating because the fan was jammed because it was visibly clogged and I can here the fan running now, this isn't a new PS3 I bought it two days after PS3's came out I've had it a long time and this is the first time it's been taken all the way apart and cleaned.

I've done business with him enough to know that he always charges me at least what he guesses at first. My problem is that I did trust him, I never bothered to ask him exactly how long it takes him to do anything. That's why I was shocked when I did it myself and it only took me half an hour to remedy the problem. It took me a majority of that time to take it apart because I needed to keep track of how it went together because I'm totally inexperienced, he would have been able to do it faster. I never had a problem until I realized exactly how quickly he would be able to move through the work I brought him. Since he always charges at least his ballpark guess I have to imagine there's inevitably a situation when he throws out a $100 charge and finds out a wire's loose in five minutes.

It just seems that at he's been misleading me about how much time he puts into his repairs and the difficulty of his work. I'm shocked because all of a sudden I have evidence that someone who I thought was my friend is a dishonest person and he's been taking advantage of me because I thought he was my friend.

 

[manaman]

I'm shocked because all of a sudden I have evidence that someone who I thought was my friend is a dishonest person and he's been taking advantage of me because I thought he was my friend.

No you don't. You have an assumption. You are assuming that because this repair took this much time that every time, or most of the times where the same. That is a very faulty assumption.

This here is why I have contract rates with most of my customers. I don't give them a price, they don't ask for one. We have a contract they take their work to me, and drop stuff off for repairs. The repair shop is only around because the quantity of custom work rolling out anyway. I would run it as just a project house if half the crap was off the shelf, but many times they just don't make what I need, we have to make it. If a customer forgets to replace a fuse, it might only take five minutes to replace it and verify that was the problem and not secondary, but it is still going to cost most customers around $50. I also charge a troubleshooting fee if nothing is wrong. Basically there is a minimum $50 charge written into the contracts. If the work takes 30 seconds and no parts it still costs them $50.

This thread here, makes me glad I only deal with other businesses and the goverment. businesses rarely argue about a bill, even when something idiotic happens such as an employee bringing the spare module down cause he forgot to replace the failed one with the spare before bringing the module to us.

You are right about one thing. Sometimes you do get lucky and it is an easy fix. Sometimes you think the power supply is hosed and when you get working you find a high resistance spot and a little solder job fixes everything. But sometimes you think it will be easy and you find when you are replacing the connector that the shock of the drop that broke in the first place actually lifted the traces from a 5 layer circuit board and now you have to replace the entire board.

 

[MattZero]

SNIP

You make good points. It just seems excessive to me. I know that no matter what was wrong with the system he would have charged me at least $150 if not more. I don't know a lot about the electronics repair business so I only really know what he does as a person. You would think a friend would do what you said... a fifty dollar charge for a crack open, tell me I should clean it out more often. It just seems he ballparks his minimum price based on how much it would cost to buy a new whatever. If PS3s still costed $600 like when I bought it then he would have said $300 at least. If I would have brought in my computer with the exact same problem and the exact same solution he would have charged me $500 because my computer is worth $1,000 new.

But your right. Sometimes a repair might be a pain in the ass and take a long time. But the way he sets his prices he makes "pain in the ass" level money no matter what. You say in your post that no matter what the minimum cost you charge is a $50 service charge. If they bring in a $200 PSP and it takes you five minutes... $50 if they bring in a $7,000 TV and it takes you five minutes... $50. With my guy a five minute job on the PSP is like $75 dollars, but the five minutes spent on the $7,000 TV is going to be like $3,000 just because you can't buy a new comparable TV at that rate.

This only became screwed up sounding to me on this PS3 thing because a broken 80gig PS3 is worth $150 in parts. I could have sold it for scrap and paid what he wanted for a cleaning for a brand new one.

My "assumption" that he's been taking advantage of me isn't based on that I think it only takes him 5 minutes to do everything. I'm basing it on that he charges a percentage of a new model for a minimum price regardless of the problem and he has no issue raising it even higher when it sounds like he did something expensive.

Imagine if you had a $10,000 car and you took it in for a repair you couldn't do yourself and the mechanic charged you $5,000 for it even though it took him a few minutes just because if you want a working model of your car you can either pay his psychotically high rate or pay full price for a new one.

 

[silverxxx]

The problem is that you assumed he was giving you discount prices. Sure, it's a bit expensive, but there's taxes, he had to study, pay the rent, and at the and of the day you might have been electrocuted on a nasty power supply capacitor anyway.

 

[Kortney]

It's a law of the universe that everyone has (or is) that token I.T whiz in your group of friends.

Get them to fix your stuff. For free.

 

[The_Graff]

every time you start to hear the whiney little emo ***** in the back of your head remember that you are unhappy because your expensive games machine isn't doing what you want it to. then also remeber that there are people out there who are unhappy because they just got raped by some meglomaniac with a kalashnikov. then ***** slap the whiney little emo ***** in the back of your head and carry on enjoying your life.