Computer Repairs: What is a Fair PC Diagnostic Fee for Everyone?

What should a computer repair shop charge to diagnose your computer problem? What is fair to both the business and the customer? What exactly is a “diagnostic” anyway? I get this question a lot and it’s sometimes hard to answer. I always try to give the best value I can, but sometimes people just don’t understand what’s involved.

A diagnostic simply means to find out what’s wrong with the computer. Usually, a technician can figure this out quickly, however, there are times when it can take hours to figure out what’s wrong. I’ll outline some common situations and how we handle them.

Types of Diagnostic Scenarios:

1. The technician knows immediately what’s wrong and soon as the PC is turned on.
2. He knows what the general problem is, but needs to analyze further to find the exact problem.
3. The PC is showing problems in several areas, or is giving very general error messages.
4. It may have issues that can be caused by several different causes, so several tests need to be run.
5. After repairing an obvious problem, other issues appear.

As you can see, there can be a very broad range of situations. Some may require several test and analyses to be run. Often times, the diagnostic procedure is the same as the repair procedure, so as the technician tries different things, he actually repairs the problem.

How we handle these situations?

1. For Scenario 1, if the problem is obvious, there is no diagnostic fee. We just charge for the repair.
2. For Scenarios 2-5, there is a $45 fee for desktops, or $65 for laptops.

For laptops, things can get tricky. If it must be taken apart to diagnose, there is an additional $40 fee to put it back together (because this can take up to an hour). If the customer decides not to fix the laptop, they usually don’t care about putting it back together anyway, so there’s usually no extra charge.

The Good News!

Our diagnostic fees are always credited toward the repair, so if you repair the computer, there is actually NO diagnostic fee. It’s FREE!

We only use diagnostic fees to cover our time if the customer chooses not to repair the PC. Sure, we sometimes lose money that way, but we feel it’s good customer service and generates trust.

If you’re having computer problems, and want to find out more about us, please visit our Tucson Computer & Laptop Repair website. Better yet, give us a call and talk to us personally, at (520) 250-5948.