computer repair shops?

J

jaime_lion

New Member
So I was wondering if anyone in here had any stories about computer repair shops going under? Where I live there used to be 5 business's and now only 1 remains cause of the disposable computers and the cheapness and the cloud and such.

Other peoples thoughts?
 
Over the past ten years, in my town there have been four that opened and closed in less than a year. At present there's one which has been open for maybe four years, and I really don't know how he stays in business. There's never anyone in there, there's no parking area, and they never advertise. Either they stay alive with business maintenance contracts or it's a tax writeoff.
 
lol yeah same here, The one that is open I never see anyone in there but there is a business cause like a majority of the people that live in my area are seniors so they know potatoes about computers.
 
There's no money to be made in a bricks and mortar computer retailer. Its impossible to have the expensive stock on hand as it becomes redundant so quickly and the cheaper stuff has very little margin after you pay for overheads. That means that unless you have contracts with enterprise customers, or a large local populations (e.g. scan / yoyotech in london), you will find it hard to make a profit.

Also, the 'expertise' has really become a non-factors. A complete muppet can build a computer these days, and if anything goes wrong, there is google, which will determine the issue nine times out of ten (e.g. forums like this).

So really, there is no value proposition, and little profit to be made. Along with this its very capital intensive and a difficult sell when online and high-street cheap boxes do the job for the mum's and dad's out there.
 
I used to work for a successful small repair shop. The big thing to staying successful is having competitive prices and better service than the next guy. It's all about making the customer happy. A lot of people don't want to buy a new computer and want to fix the ones they have, and some will be willing to pay no matter what the cost is sometimes (which is a bit ridiculous, but if they wanna do it....).

We also sold refurbished PC's that we would either buy from others off the street or from a large reseller that dealt in refurbished PC's. They were well priced for their specs and very good machines (mostly Dell Latitude's, HP EliteBooks, and Dell OpriPlex's) as well as the occasional Insiron, HP Pavilion, etc.

You just need to be good with customers and not talk down to them. Tone down the tech talk because most of them don't understand the lingo. Also, even though you know they're all idiots, don't let them know you think that. And also no matter how stupid the thing is they want you to fix, just do it. They're going to be willing to pay you.
 
voyagerfan99 said:
I used to work for a successful small repair shop. The big thing to staying successful is having competitive prices and better service than the next guy. It's all about making the customer happy. A lot of people don't want to buy a new computer and want to fix the ones they have, and some will be willing to pay no matter what the cost is sometimes (which is a bit ridiculous, but if they wanna do it....).

We also sold refurbished PC's that we would either buy from others off the street or from a large reseller that dealt in refurbished PC's. They were well priced for their specs and very good machines (mostly Dell Latitude's, HP EliteBooks, and Dell OpriPlex's) as well as the occasional Insiron, HP Pavilion, etc.

You just need to be good with customers and not talk down to them. Tone down the tech talk because most of them don't understand the lingo. Also, even though you know they're all idiots, don't let them know you think that. And also no matter how stupid the thing is they want you to fix, just do it. They're going to be willing to pay you.
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Is this computer repair place still in business?
 
As Geoff said, yeah it's still in business.

There was a larger business that was a competitor of ours and we actually drive them out of business by providing much better service and customer support compared to them. Their customers found out about us and began coming our way. Eventually they just couldn't stay in business anymore an closed.
 
got one of those near me.total computer geeks and willing to fix anything.they have a nice selection of new and refurbished computers.bought my hyper 212-evo from them.paid 10 or 15 dollars more than off the net but im funny that way.i like to support my local businesses.one of the problems with these small shops is that there is no customer loyalty anymore.
 
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