How much....

[sippo]

....should I charge to fit a teachers laptop keyboard or should I not bother?

What would you do? I know it wouldn't take me long but he said he would take it to a shop to be done. How much would they charge?

[stevenlong1985]

£15 to £25

[Potato-Peeler]

The price of the keyboard and £60 an hour, divided by how long it actually took you? So half an hour 30 quid?

[Edu-IT]

£60 an hour

Are you based in London?

[pagelad]

Id just fit it for free and make a cheeky remark when doing it.

I do a few teachers machines \ laptops, never hurts to make yourself liked by the staff. They usually furnish me with a bottle of wine or something similar when i see them again which is always nice.

[steveg]

I normally do smaller jobs like that for beer or chocolate!

Steve

[broc]

I generally do things for 'free' too, and if pressed suggest maybe a bottle of wine as a thank you. I once got half a case of wine from someone for doing some work for them.... very nice it was too!

My worry is once you start taking payment you have all sorts of obligations.... what happens if you break something, or some later problem occurs....

I offer a no fee, do my best but no guarantee level of service.....

[DrPerceptron]

At £60 an hour... I would get a whopping £1 for changing a laptop keyboard here... and that's if I charge for at least 1 minute.

[sippo]

the thing is this member of staff, I like, but he'll be expecting it to be done for free (although he'll pay for the replacement keyboard). If he was going to take it to a shop then he's willing to pay.

I'll probably do it for some beer.

[Dom_]

I generally do stuff like this for free, usually people give a thank you card with cash in, or beer/wine, but i'm not bothered if they don't tbh

[jumpinjamez]

I am a no fee no guarantee guy?

I do stuggle with the "can you put MS office on laptop please i only have a 60 day trial"

i tell them as a teacher they can get it for £60 approx and they look at me like "i have to pay cant you put it on for free?" so i point them to Open office

[sidewinder]

unless it was a nightmare laptop that required hours of dissassembly to get to the keyboard id do it for nothing

[RabbieBurns]

something like replacing a keyboard id do for free. Id just get them to bring the laptop and the kb to my office, and do it on school time, as theoretically the laptop is used for the staff to do school work on no doubt. That way, im still theoretically getitng paid for doing it.

[apoth0r]

Always charge something, even if its a bar of chocolate.
You don't want to be the guy who does everything for free, you may bite off more than you can chew.
Don't they gossip!

[dalsoth]

I would not do it at all.

Like someone or not, you start doing "personal" work for them, you go from friend to IT fixer. Even my family get a snarl if they bother we with computer stuff too much as you need to balance your work life with other things too.

I used to go home from work, do a couple of machine rebuilds for friends and family then it got to me bringing home staff home computers and laptops with no guarantee they would pay anything. It would be computers all day at work and then all night at home. Yes i do love computers and spend my own time messing with them at home but that is usually little projects or certification studies and not simple reinstalling XP for someone for the 20th time.

Some do not even bother to say thanks, just an email to drop it off in their office or something. Yeah you may get a box of chocolates from someone but sometimes you may have spent 3-4 hours installing the OS, apps, restoring work from backup and then updating it all. Box of chocs be damned!! £30-40 an hour at least. There are problems though with asking for cash as brought up in the past as you have to declare this to your employer in many cases.

When you tell someone you will end up spending 3 hours or so on their laptop and want £90 quid they treat you like you just tried to kidnap their child.

Laptop keyboard would take me less than a minute to do but i still would say no. Got to help the economy and keep those PC World - IT Guys in business as they really do need the practice.