I hate being the family technical support person.

1 votes

20 February 2012

Posted by astrangeone

I took two years of school in a community college for networking/computers. It was pretty cool, although a huge sausage fest at times. An entire class, which was fourty people consisted of three girls, including the professor. It was pretty funny, although.

Long story short - I'm a tech nerd, and pretty much always have been. The only problem? My relatives think that they can call me at any time to get their computers fixed. I have been called for a dying gaming PC in which the PSU was overtaxed to a minor software problem, to basically reformatting the drive and adding back programs.

I spent all of today fixing my family's laptops. My mother had bought a refurb'ed Lenovo T61 Thinkpad, and it didn't come with any of the programs that she needed. I ended up putting Avira, Malware Bytes, Foxit Reader, Defraggler and Speccy on her laptop. Also, Libreoffice - it's pretty cool, and pretty decent. My dad's laptop is a quad core machine, and I basically had to remove some of the crap on it. I also ended up defragmenting all the portable machines in the house - mine included. That took too much time...

Steps I Took:

0) Find a software list that my mother likes
1) Argue with her that her laptop isn't suitable for MS Office 2010
2) Offer Libreoffice as a solution
3) More arguing...and being accused of a computer snob -> really, mom? I've been using the same Celeron M laptop for eight years....
4) Mom is convinced by her tech savvy friends that Libreoffice is great! :hateit:

5) *mumble* Download the list of free solutions to my flash drive
6) Attempt to activate her used XP installation - see that the clerk wrote down the old serial...*mumble* :blink:

7) Copy and paste; install programs over to her laptop
8) Hook up a live patch cable
9) Wait for Windows Update to finish :nayps3:

9B) Remove all the free trials from her laptop
10) Update the protective programs
11) Restart, defrag the drive
12) Creates a system restore.

Now:
- my eyes hurt
- my back hurts (sitting at a desk all day...yuck!)
- my parents think I can fix anything, and now...sheesh.
- I really should charge for services rendered. :creep:

17 Comments

Comments

Sean On Fire
Feb 20 2012 06:26 AM

I know how that feels. I'm somewhat the "tech saavy" person in the house, and whenever my mother's laptop can't connect to our router, it's my fault.
When a software refuses to respond, it's my fault.
You get the idea.

Dust2dust
Feb 20 2012 01:00 PM

If they are ungrateful for all the work you do for them (for free), next time thay ask you to fix some problem, tell them:"That beats me! I have absolutely no clue how to fix it. Maybe you should bring it to a computer shop and see if they can fix it." Some people think because you're good at this stuff, you enjoy doing it as if it was entertainment. I'm sure you would have preferred to spend your time playing a video game, watch some movies or hang out with friends, instead of wasting the entire day fixing a damn computer. If they don't pay for your work, the least they could do is do something nice for you. Try to bargain some agreement.

Luigi2012SM64DS
Feb 20 2012 02:18 PM

how do you think i feel when my 2nd bro is not around?(the more tech dude then me)

FireEmblemGuy
Feb 20 2012 02:54 PM

It's the same around my house, even though my mom's been using computers for more than 15 years and my dad's a former software engineer/computer builder. What's worse, my dad hasn't been in the computer business for close to twenty years, hasn't done much of anything other than buying a prebuilt PC since '05, and doesn't use any sort of PC on a regular basis, yet always finds time to criticize how I handle things. The last time I let him do something without supervision, he ended up formatting my brother's OS and media partitions... all he needed to do was run Startup Repair.

Suprgamr232
Feb 20 2012 02:54 PM

My uncle does that for a living, charges $100-$200 an hours. Obviously this is what you should do.

raulpica
Feb 20 2012 03:23 PM

@Pinkie232
I charge $30 an hour and people think that I'm costly and don't ever call again.

Go figure.

Suprgamr232
Feb 20 2012 03:56 PM

Jeez...Well I mean my uncle does this for a living so...he also builds PCs for people, does random installs, etc etc. A couple months ago he was paid around $2000 to build a guy a $5000 PC. Like holy fuck shit. The PC was good as fuck too.

raulpica
Feb 20 2012 05:12 PM

I do the same things. I only get $30 for building a PC. People here only buy max $400 PCs.
They're cheap as heck. And I haven't built a PC in months, even though I also work in a shop.

What a crappy country I live in.

astrangeone
Feb 20 2012 05:27 PM

Lol. I can't very well charge my immediate family for this - and plus, I'm heading to Hong Kong for a vacation, and my mother is paying my way!

Lily
Feb 20 2012 06:25 PM

I've been the family tech support person my whole life, and I don't care. They're my family!

(@raulpica) I charge $10CDN in increments of 15 minutes at my shop for anything not covered by my flat fee services. I'm pretty flexible about moving the price around depending on the client. I tend to feel that charging a reasonable amount and getting repeat business/word of mouth advertising is worth far more than hosing people. I despise the people that charge outrageous rates for computer repair, they give everyone a bad name.

raulpica
Feb 20 2012 09:39 PM

I do the same thing, I'm offering cheaper services hoping for more customers. Which I still don't get anymore, since we're in a deep economical crisis right now and there are people offering full formats and stuff for only $20 (and I don't like to work for TWO hours just for $20) so my field of work is slowly getting deteriorated by a wholeload of people calling themselves technicians, when the only thing they know to do is "insert Windows DVD. hit format. reinstall everythin" to resolve every problem they might have, reducing the work for people who like me studied an entire life to know their stuff.

Amen on the rates thing, Lily. Amen.

astrangeone
Feb 21 2012 12:47 AM

Yea, raulpica - I think that's the whole problem. My solution to things is never to nuke the windows installation - that's the last thing I'd do. I rather try less intensive fixes - which makes it easier to recover data and the like.

I usually do laptops, although. They are a pain!

raulpica
Feb 21 2012 01:19 AM

Exactly what I've specialized into :rofl:

Quick fixes for everything.

Yup, desktops ftw.

DiscostewSM
Feb 21 2012 02:31 AM

I'm the tech guy in my family. With the slightest problem my parents have, whether it is with a computer, or even the dang VCR, they come to me. I don't know all the answers, but I know enough about how to deal with situations for when I need to go searching. I continually tell my dad that if he finds a problem, then Google it, but he insists that I help him regardless. They even had a few of their friends ask me for help in such cases. I'm glad to help, but not on a constant basis, and I'm hesitant to request payment for my services for simple things. I should, but that isn't my nature because they are friends of the family.

Maybe I should be a tech guy for Apple or something.

BortzANATOR
Feb 21 2012 06:14 AM

"you're wasting my left clicks!"

FireGrey
Feb 21 2012 02:20 PM

I don't mind helping my family out.
All they ask for is to help them burn DVDs, occasionally help with a program.
But what annoys me is that I'm in the highest computer class and half of the class is full of idiots which the teacher decided to group with me so that I can help their grades >.>

AkiroWolfman
Feb 22 2012 05:27 PM

Listen right here guys, according to the ancient wisdom of the wisest masters. It was decreed that there would be one person in the household who would destroy computers and one who would fix them right up again. Now judging by replys it seems to be the people here who fix them and mums that break them.

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