How much should you pay for computer repairs or IT support?

In general there are three types all computer repair companies:

1. Large corporations
2. Medium businesses
3. Single owner/technician operation

With large corporations there is also a large overhead and usually under qualified technicians. The training that the company provides is usually very basic and majority of computer repairs end up with Windows re-installation. In the long run that technique fixes any kind of problem but that creates a huge headache for a user who is now responsible for backing up all the existing data. To make it even more complicated a user would have to reinstall old programs and re-import all of their data. If the user is unable to perform a backup that would be a pretty expensive service which the corporation will offer as an option.

With medium businesses which are much more flexible and usually know their business inside out and do not have the overhead of a large corporation, they're able to offer similar or cheaper prices for the same service and much more in terms of service in most cases. Windows reinstallation would be the last resort which saves them and the user enormous amount of time by not having to backup and reinstall everything from scratch.

Single owner / technician operation is really a toss of a coin. The reason for that is that you may, come across a really good technician who is just starting out or you may come across a scam artist whose prices for the services are to good to be true and if that's the case you will end up paying twice to have the problem resolved, and hope that the important data was untouched.

As far as the cost let's take a specific example such as virus removal you can expect to play anywhere from $100-$200 with a large corporation on average $100 with the medium-sized business and as low as $30 with a single technician.

It'll be a very similar proportion of costs for majority of other services

Large corporation

Pros

• Warranty
• Turnaround time - if the computer is relatively new and they have plenty of spare parts onsite, or you have an extended warranty and can get an instant replacement.

Cons

• Service
• Price
• Cost of extended warranty, some times costs as much as buying 2 laptops within 5 year period.
• Turnaround time - having a computer fixed same day may not be possible due to popularity of their service and shortage of staff.

Medium business

Pros

• Service
• Warranty
• Price
• Turnaround time - few hours if the parts are available

Cons

• Turnaround time - if parts have to be ordered (1 - 3 days), may not have enough people on staff to perform repairs same-day

Single technician

Pros

• Price - especially for onsite services.

Cons

• Possible scam
• Turnaround time

The bottom line is if you're not them extremely tight budget it's probably the best and safest bet with the medium-sized business who has a physical office established and the staff and do not have the overhead of the large corporation and will do their best to build up clientele in in extremely competitive market.