Client Charge ??

I had a client who had a virus which killed the XP tables on the hard drive and it failed to boot. I was able to spend about 4 hours recovering the data and than I had to proceed with a load of XP - restore the data.

Than, they are in a network enviroment that I had to join the domain, create accounts and shares. Load 15 programs on the machine, reconnect all drives and printers. I spent well over 12 hours on the entire setup.

So - I normally charge 125.00 an hour and called around to find out others charge about the same rate but are limited on their network roles.

Do I hit the client with a 12 hours @125.00 an hour or what amount has anyone else charged for something like this?

 

Did you tell the client at some point that they were looking at over $1000 to restore this machine? As a business owner, I wouldn't spend $1000 to save an XP machine. If there was any critical data, I would specify it and ask that it be recovered, if possible, with a 2 hour cap, depending on what the data is.

If I were looking at $1000 to recover an XP staton, I'd have Dell Outlet sending me a new Win 7 machine instead for less.

If your client asked to recover the station at basically any cost, then over $1000 would be justified. Who sets up their stations and joins the network normally? What do they normally pay to have a station setup? If you charge $1500 for this, you may well get paid but never called again. You had better talk to the person who ordered the repair. Explain that now that you are familiar with their system and network that future work will be faster and cheaper.

 

12 hours?? Was this your first time? I'd agree you hit them with a huge bill, you'll not likely get called back. I can recover data (and decrypt it) reload and have a PC back running in at least half that time. Was most of the time spent by you looking for software, etc or by them getting info to you? If the slow down was because you had to find out how to fix stuff, you can't charge them for your learning curve.
How did you get the computer back on the domain? Did they give you admin access?

 

If it takes an hour installing windows, and your not even touching that computer for most of that hour, do you still bill for the that time? or just actual hands on time? Was this all onsite work? Have you called and said hey this is gonna take more then 2 hours or so, and given them the option to get out at that point? Handygal is pretty much spot on in this case, and businesses in your town will figure out fast if this is how you normal operate. Most shops in my area charge any were from 100-200 dollars on a system reload, i would charge around that, and just eat the rest in hoping you get the return business.