A straight answer, from me, with nothing hidden behind it. If you read one section, read the one about respect.
Parts cost more than they ever have. Consultation — the part of this job nobody sees — has been free for far too long. And a business that runs on goodwill instead of invoices is not a business; it is a hobby that bills you for the privilege of doing it.
New rates take effect August 15, 2026. Work already quoted or in progress is honored at the old rate, and current care-plan clients keep their monthly price for twelve months.
Drives, memory, boards, batteries, adapters, cable: the hardware side of this trade has climbed steeply and has not come back down. I do not play markup games on parts to quietly recover that; I charge for my labor and pass parts through honestly. When the parts side climbs, labor is the only place the math can be corrected.
Phone calls. Texts. "Quick questions." Second opinions on gear someone is about to buy. Walking somebody through a problem while they are standing in a store. That is the work. It is thirty years around this equipment — more than twenty of them paid — compressed into knowing which question to ask and which three hours of your life you can skip. It has been the single largest unbilled part of my week for as long as I have been doing this.
I keep a 100% satisfaction guarantee and I go well past where most people would stop. That is worth something, and for years I acted like it was not. Rent, utilities, insurance, a vehicle that has to keep running so I can get to you, tools, food, medical — two decades into doing this for a living, that model has never once left anything behind as savings. A business that cannot cover its own costs is not generous. It is just quietly failing, politely, on someone else's schedule.
I offer consultation. It is a real service with a real rate, like everything else here. A lot of people genuinely did not know that, and that is fair — so here it is in plain terms:
What I am no longer doing is diagnosing problems and handing out solutions for free over the phone. Not because I stopped caring — I have not — but because I cannot keep funding it personally.
It has never been about greed. If it were, I would not give away as much free information as I do, and I would not be more than twenty years into a career with nothing set aside.
But it stings to spend two or three hours untangling someone's mess, hand them a clear answer that actually works, and then hear that next time they will take it to a club they pay ten dollars a year for. By all means — take it there. That is what it is for. Some of the people I have helped for nothing are considerably better off than I am, and the thanks came as a lunch offer or nothing at all. I do not say that to shame anyone. I say it because I let it happen, over and over, and the only person who can stop it is me.
I would rather do excellent work for people who value it than endless favors for people who do not.
If you already pay for a support plan, a club, or a big-box membership, use it. Get your money's worth out of it. I just cannot be the free backstop for when it does not deliver.
I have been taking computers apart since I was twelve and getting paid for it since I was nineteen — thirty-plus years around this equipment, more than twenty of them professional. That time was not all spent at one bench, and that is the point: the same person who diagnoses your machine has had to make technology work in a medical manufacturing environment, inside a global electronics distributor, and in code.
In-warranty Mac repair to Apple's standard, as the lead tech on the bench. Apple ACMT and ACSP certified.
Independent PC repair and service since 19 — Windows, macOS, and Linux, plus custom builds. No single ecosystem to sell you.
Technical work in prosthetics manufacturing and at Avnet — settings where "close enough" is not an acceptable repair.
I build the software too, which is why I can fix the problems that are not actually hardware.
You are not paying for an hour of somebody's time. You are paying for the twenty years that make the hour short.
I am not going to pretend the alternatives do not exist. Best Buy's My Best Buy Total membership runs about $199.99 a year and bundles Geek Squad support; their in-home service calls generally run in the $50 to $405 range depending on the job, and remote services roughly $40 to $150. For some people that is the right call, and I mean that. If you have it, use it.
What happens in practice, constantly, is this: the plan does not fix it, or the answer comes back as "buy a new one," and then my phone rings. I am glad to take that call. I am no longer able to take it for free.
I have never upsold anyone, and I never will. Not once in more than twenty years of paid work have I recommended a part, an upgrade, a subscription, or a service that a person did not genuinely need — including the years I spent as a lead technician inside an authorized warranty shop. If your machine is not worth repairing, I will tell you that and lose the job. If the fix is free and you can do it yourself in ten minutes, I will tell you that too.
Big-box tech support is not built that way, and that is not my opinion so much as a documented one. A former Geek Squad technician described stores where "selling services and warranties are pushed more than actually completing repairs," where employees were "required to track each individual sale" and get a manager to sign off on their numbers before going home — with extra coaching for anyone who fell short of their targets.
When the person diagnosing your computer has a sales number to hit, their incentive and your interest are not the same thing. I do not have a number to hit. Nobody pays me a commission. When I tell you what your machine needs, that is simply what it needs — and that is a large part of what my rate buys you.
Sources: Consumerist, "9 Confessions Of A Former Geek Squad Geek"; published Geek Squad and My Best Buy Total pricing as of July 2026. Prices and programs are theirs and may change — check with them directly.
The parts people actually value were never the parts costing me money.
Unchanged. If I did not fix it, we are not done. That has never been contingent on price.
Unchanged, on diagnostics and all labor, with no markup on parts. This was never the place to find savings.
Referred by an existing customer? Your on-site rate is $110/hr instead of $125, and the new-client first-hour rate is waived.
Telling you what a defined job costs is not consulting. You will never be charged for an estimate.
The guides, blog posts, resources, and videos on this site stay public and free. That has always been the giving-back part.
No commissions, no quotas, no "recommended" work you do not need. Not once in 20+ years of paid work, and not ever.
Then no hard feelings, honestly. The free guides on this site stay free, and you are welcome to them whether you ever hire me or not. I am not trying to squeeze anyone — I am trying to build something that can still be here in five years, doing careful, honest work for people who want exactly that.
If that is you, I would be glad to work for you. Thank you for reading all of it.
— Sid