I found this article when trying to help me decide to shutdown my residential computer repair business or to keep it open. I was 99% sure that I was going to shut it down however after having a residential computer repair business for over 20 years I just needed more feel-good info which I found here. In turn, I would like to share some experience.
Here's my story. I've been in the IT industry for over 30 years now. I started repairing computers for people while in high school back in the early 90's (out of my parents basement) and mostly for free because I just loved tech. Eventually this lead me to start my own 'computer business' which I did out of a duplex (renting out the other half and living in the other with the shop part basically the living room) because my parents didn't want people coming to the house - and I don't blame them for this at all and I don't recommend having people come to your house either. If you do, you'll learn. I even dropped out of college in the late 90's because I had too much business to do both. Nevertheless, back then computers were expensive ($3000 for a good computer) so it wasn't hard to sell a refurbished 5 year old computer for $500 or more and I charged an hourly rate for repair which was somewhat flexible based on what people could afford. Leading up to buying the duplex I was also doing some commercial jobs too which was all money in the bank. I still remember going to the book store to get a NOVELL book. lol
Anyway, I opened my first residential store around the year 2000 and hired employees. I found a house on a busy street in a good area and in front of an old plaza that I was able to live upstairs, work on the main floor, and I converted the garage into the residential store front. Anything that I could do, I did myself to save money and ALL of my time was spent in the business. It was nothing for me to spend 80+ hour weeks if not more to get things going.
Back then we charged a $25 Diag for someone to drop off the computer and had a 4 hour max for residential computer repair. Almost all repairs where easily over $100 for labor and training an employee to do check-ins and diags was pretty easy and low-cost so it worked out BUT residential repair was NEVER an easy or highly profitable business. ...BUT I will say that people would bring stuff to you to fix that was pretty easy which helped offset the hard stuff or problem customers. Back then this was also how we got referrals into businesses but in today's world it's all about your google business box.
Meanwhile computer prices continued to fall and customers got smarter. Eventually we stopped building computers around the great recession (2009) because they fell below $1000/computer. Around that time DELL also had a partner program which also made it profitable to resell DELL and we could focus more on service than hardware. Providing a hardware warranty to a customer was always a challenge because if something like the hard drive failed they expected you to fix the drive AND get it setup back on their network for free. All of a sudden, poof, that problem was gone and it was now a billable service after the Dell tech left or pre-Dell tech to backup the data/etc.
We also did spot check calling once a year where we would call everyone in the phone book and see what they would charge for a simple format, backup and format, etc. Most of them went out of business with-in the first year. A few lasted but none lasted longer than us. The two largest store owners died back in 2018/2019 both of which started early 2000's. I think both by suicide...
Eventually computer pricing kept falling and we had to change our rates to a $25 Diag plus Flat rate repair pricing for virus removal, backup and format, format, etc. (see picture) Around this time we took a dramatic hit to the bottom line for residential computer repair. In short, basically the residential repair center was only making around 69k/year on residential labor from service (exluding parts).
Best Buy, Staples, Office Max and others were also referring customers with hardware repairs to us so the store basically made a little bit of money on the hardware and esentialy no money on the labor because we had two techs making more than $15/hr plus 3-weeks PTO, 2-sick days, etc. (69k - 30k - 30k - benefits - OT) = 0. Keep in mind that the commercial side of business is paying utils, taxes, etc which are NOT included in the calculations here.
Over the years I hired hundreds of people and at the end of the day most could care less about you or your business. Yes you will find a few good ones but eventually most end up resenting you because they think that you're making a ton of money off of them but what they don't see are the 60hr+ weeks that you put in EVERY WEEK. In fact, I didn't even start taking vacations until the year 2008. The last 10 years (2010-2020) has been especially difficult with a lot of them lying about what they know or actually working without having to have their hands held. 2020 with COVID was even more difficult because a lot of people are getting paid NOT to work; and I can't blame them because if they're getting paid to stay home and play video games, why not? But the blessing here was that we sold almost all of our used hardware so you have to take the good with the bad.
Nevertheless, it's Kenny Rogers - The Gambler song - you have to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em.
The last of my two residential techs were with me for a little over 5 years and their wages were increased each year. The one found a job making a little more working from home and the second said that he needed a break and was going to study and get his google certs 'EXPECTING' to find a remote support job making a lot more... probably because he saw that the other guy got a cake job. My final offer to him was $22/hr, no hardware repairs such as laptop screen replacements or laptop motherboards/etc, we'd drop our two lowest repair rates, and go to a first-in-first-out repair service. Basically we'd be at $79/hr for depot (residential) repairs only (see pic) but even I wasn't sure if I'd break even on his labor considering that we'd also lose some customers too; so part of me was hoping he'd decline, which he did and I was looking to close up the residential repair or hire and train more people... which for every 10 that you hire you might find 1 good one. Some companies in other industries that I know the owners hire 3 or 4 hoping that just 1 will show up.
At the end of the day, most of the residential customers were old and a lot of the easy fix money went away with Windows 10 because the semiannual updates fix a ton of issues. Customers also continued to get smarter from having tech in their everyday life which left only the hard repairs. Now with cloud services I feel that computer repair is going to get destroyed because if your data is in the cloud why not just format the device yourself. Or if your 2 year old $400 laptop needs a $200 repair, why not just buy a new one?
Essentially COVID has also advanced the industry 5-years forward with-in 1 year and I'm nearly certain that there's going to be a huge computer repair vacuum coming.
So, bottom line - My suggestion is this, if you want to go into the computer repair business you should focus on commercial accounts... but they too are also getting harder to find as customers move their software to the cloud and implement peer-to-peer networks. In fact, most of our small commercial customers are using office 365 on a peer-to-peer setup with everything important coming from the cloud service and their devices sync to OneDrive. Dying are the days were you made tons of money setting-up and maintaining multiple servers for SQL, Exchange, AD, BD, VPN, DHCP, DNS, File Sharing, Print Sharing, Antivirus, Backup systems, etc. and as customers understand this , they're going to move away from MSP's too because who needs a monthly bill for support if you never call them?
If you're smart enough and have the grit you can make it work but you're NOT going to get rich on residential computer repair.
Oh - and we never touched cell phone repair, newer Apple products, or the Microsoft Surface because they were highly unprofitable or a disaster for various reasons. I suppose if you're doing it yourself you could do it rather than sitting around but to pay someone to fix it was laughable... For example the surface is glue on fabric, good luck with that repair.
Best of success and I hope this helps.
PS: I also tried opening a second store back in the early 2000's too but I couldn't be in two places at once. Between the theft and bad employees it was a net loss. That area also had a lot more wealthy people too but that actually translated into LESS computer repairs because they'd just buy a new computer (get a data transfer to the new one) or their IT guy from work would take care of them. A computer store did open up there after I moved out but I think it was a constant struggle for him too but it goes to show that with the right people and determination you can make it work - but at what cost?
Here's my story. I've been in the IT industry for over 30 years now. I started repairing computers for people while in high school back in the early 90's (out of my parents basement) and mostly for free because I just loved tech. Eventually this lead me to start my own 'computer business' which I did out of a duplex (renting out the other half and living in the other with the shop part basically the living room) because my parents didn't want people coming to the house - and I don't blame them for this at all and I don't recommend having people come to your house either. If you do, you'll learn. I even dropped out of college in the late 90's because I had too much business to do both. Nevertheless, back then computers were expensive ($3000 for a good computer) so it wasn't hard to sell a refurbished 5 year old computer for $500 or more and I charged an hourly rate for repair which was somewhat flexible based on what people could afford. Leading up to buying the duplex I was also doing some commercial jobs too which was all money in the bank. I still remember going to the book store to get a NOVELL book. lol
Anyway, I opened my first residential store around the year 2000 and hired employees. I found a house on a busy street in a good area and in front of an old plaza that I was able to live upstairs, work on the main floor, and I converted the garage into the residential store front. Anything that I could do, I did myself to save money and ALL of my time was spent in the business. It was nothing for me to spend 80+ hour weeks if not more to get things going.
Back then we charged a $25 Diag for someone to drop off the computer and had a 4 hour max for residential computer repair. Almost all repairs where easily over $100 for labor and training an employee to do check-ins and diags was pretty easy and low-cost so it worked out BUT residential repair was NEVER an easy or highly profitable business. ...BUT I will say that people would bring stuff to you to fix that was pretty easy which helped offset the hard stuff or problem customers. Back then this was also how we got referrals into businesses but in today's world it's all about your google business box.
Meanwhile computer prices continued to fall and customers got smarter. Eventually we stopped building computers around the great recession (2009) because they fell below $1000/computer. Around that time DELL also had a partner program which also made it profitable to resell DELL and we could focus more on service than hardware. Providing a hardware warranty to a customer was always a challenge because if something like the hard drive failed they expected you to fix the drive AND get it setup back on their network for free. All of a sudden, poof, that problem was gone and it was now a billable service after the Dell tech left or pre-Dell tech to backup the data/etc.
We also did spot check calling once a year where we would call everyone in the phone book and see what they would charge for a simple format, backup and format, etc. Most of them went out of business with-in the first year. A few lasted but none lasted longer than us. The two largest store owners died back in 2018/2019 both of which started early 2000's. I think both by suicide...
Eventually computer pricing kept falling and we had to change our rates to a $25 Diag plus Flat rate repair pricing for virus removal, backup and format, format, etc. (see picture) Around this time we took a dramatic hit to the bottom line for residential computer repair. In short, basically the residential repair center was only making around 69k/year on residential labor from service (exluding parts).
Best Buy, Staples, Office Max and others were also referring customers with hardware repairs to us so the store basically made a little bit of money on the hardware and esentialy no money on the labor because we had two techs making more than $15/hr plus 3-weeks PTO, 2-sick days, etc. (69k - 30k - 30k - benefits - OT) = 0. Keep in mind that the commercial side of business is paying utils, taxes, etc which are NOT included in the calculations here.
Over the years I hired hundreds of people and at the end of the day most could care less about you or your business. Yes you will find a few good ones but eventually most end up resenting you because they think that you're making a ton of money off of them but what they don't see are the 60hr+ weeks that you put in EVERY WEEK. In fact, I didn't even start taking vacations until the year 2008. The last 10 years (2010-2020) has been especially difficult with a lot of them lying about what they know or actually working without having to have their hands held. 2020 with COVID was even more difficult because a lot of people are getting paid NOT to work; and I can't blame them because if they're getting paid to stay home and play video games, why not? But the blessing here was that we sold almost all of our used hardware so you have to take the good with the bad.
Nevertheless, it's Kenny Rogers - The Gambler song - you have to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em.
The last of my two residential techs were with me for a little over 5 years and their wages were increased each year. The one found a job making a little more working from home and the second said that he needed a break and was going to study and get his google certs 'EXPECTING' to find a remote support job making a lot more... probably because he saw that the other guy got a cake job. My final offer to him was $22/hr, no hardware repairs such as laptop screen replacements or laptop motherboards/etc, we'd drop our two lowest repair rates, and go to a first-in-first-out repair service. Basically we'd be at $79/hr for depot (residential) repairs only (see pic) but even I wasn't sure if I'd break even on his labor considering that we'd also lose some customers too; so part of me was hoping he'd decline, which he did and I was looking to close up the residential repair or hire and train more people... which for every 10 that you hire you might find 1 good one. Some companies in other industries that I know the owners hire 3 or 4 hoping that just 1 will show up.
At the end of the day, most of the residential customers were old and a lot of the easy fix money went away with Windows 10 because the semiannual updates fix a ton of issues. Customers also continued to get smarter from having tech in their everyday life which left only the hard repairs. Now with cloud services I feel that computer repair is going to get destroyed because if your data is in the cloud why not just format the device yourself. Or if your 2 year old $400 laptop needs a $200 repair, why not just buy a new one?
Essentially COVID has also advanced the industry 5-years forward with-in 1 year and I'm nearly certain that there's going to be a huge computer repair vacuum coming.
So, bottom line - My suggestion is this, if you want to go into the computer repair business you should focus on commercial accounts... but they too are also getting harder to find as customers move their software to the cloud and implement peer-to-peer networks. In fact, most of our small commercial customers are using office 365 on a peer-to-peer setup with everything important coming from the cloud service and their devices sync to OneDrive. Dying are the days were you made tons of money setting-up and maintaining multiple servers for SQL, Exchange, AD, BD, VPN, DHCP, DNS, File Sharing, Print Sharing, Antivirus, Backup systems, etc. and as customers understand this , they're going to move away from MSP's too because who needs a monthly bill for support if you never call them?
If you're smart enough and have the grit you can make it work but you're NOT going to get rich on residential computer repair.
Oh - and we never touched cell phone repair, newer Apple products, or the Microsoft Surface because they were highly unprofitable or a disaster for various reasons. I suppose if you're doing it yourself you could do it rather than sitting around but to pay someone to fix it was laughable... For example the surface is glue on fabric, good luck with that repair.
Best of success and I hope this helps.
PS: I also tried opening a second store back in the early 2000's too but I couldn't be in two places at once. Between the theft and bad employees it was a net loss. That area also had a lot more wealthy people too but that actually translated into LESS computer repairs because they'd just buy a new computer (get a data transfer to the new one) or their IT guy from work would take care of them. A computer store did open up there after I moved out but I think it was a constant struggle for him too but it goes to show that with the right people and determination you can make it work - but at what cost?
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) left me, I quit that company and started my own business. The immediate response was lower blood pressure, my hair stopped falling out in clumps, and my "morning constitution" became "regular" again - if you know what I mean. 
