A computer-ethical dilemna

[Mercutio]

Ontrack Easy Recovery Pro. Legal copy licensed to me (purchased after a couple of successful runs with a not-legal copy). I paid $800 for the software (bought a technician license on sale, I understand it's normally more), but just today is the first time I used it for billable work.

Customer's graphic design business lived on a 20GB hard disk in a 486 "server" running Win95 and (horrors) EZ BIOS. There's stupidity and there's criminal stupidity, I know, but hey, *I* didn't set the damn thing up.
PS in the 486 died, and the disk drive is now marginal. Easy Recovery Pro chewed through about 80% of the data on the drive in about four hours, and while there's some pretty nasty file corruption in places, all the currently-billable work of the business appears to be usable.

My "work" was limited to pulling the drive, determining its status (dying), popping it into a different machine and installing Easy Recovery, then giving the lady who owns the business a stern lecture on 486s, tape drives or at least CD-Rs, file management, backup procedures, and apparently, new techniques for swearing... that took about another hour, by which time she agreed to purchase a real backup solution of my choosing, and a decent PC to act as a file server. That's fine.

At issue, however, is the fact that I basically spent the rest of my time watching ERP operate. Normally I'd bill out at $100/hr for something like this, but I'm not certain that's fair to the customer... and I'd also like to get a return on my investment in this very expensive software. Of course I'll charge my normal contracting rate to deliver and configure a proper fileserver (probably NAS, since Win95 apparently met their needs).

I've always prided myself on being fair to my clients , but my judgement is really clouded on this one, especially since I doubt I'll get meaningful repeat business out of this one.

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[Buck]

Somewhere along the line you already justified your hourly rate at $100.00 per, so that shouldn't be an issue. Since you probably won't see any repeat business, I wouldn't offer a deal. Plus, ask yourself how much she would charge you for four hours of graphics work. Probably the same that you should be charging her.

 

[jtr1962]

Mercutio, in a case like this I would have absolutely no problem charging $100 per hour for the four hours you were watching ERP do it's thing. This is a case of customer responsibility if I ever saw one, and the fact the you probably won't get much meaningful repeat business from this client means it doesn't really matter much if they think you overcharged.

I've repaired many things in my life, designed things, helped people with computer problems(usually friends for whom I only charge for parts). There are cases where things just break, and I'm very fair about what I charge, and I also don't charge for things that aren't broken. I'll also usually honor any warranty period(generally 3 to 6 months for repairs) except in cases of customer responsibility. That being said, there are sometimes such blantant cases of customer stupidity that I don't hesitate to charge extra, or not honor the warranty. The best case I can think of it rooflight relays in taximeters. As long as the line these are on is properly fused, they rarely go bad. Sometimes they get really corroded contacts after a few years, but it's still a normal repair charge. However, there are times when the relay is a black mass of melted plastic because the customer used the wrong value fuse, or none at all. This always gets the maximum repair charge, and I write "CUSTOMER RESPONSIBILITY" right on the repair slip in big bold RED letters so they can't miss it. I replaced 3 relays on the same meter in a two week period, and charged each and every time. The guy didn't flinch. He paid his bill, and despite my lecturing him on proper fuses I continued to regularly see meters with burnt relays. In some cases, the PC board traces were gone in a few spots, and I had to run jumpers. Once again, more $$$. They break it, I fix it, I collect $$$. I've also had meters with water damage(either the car was in a flood or the driver accidentally pissed on the meter-I'm not kidding). No problem, if I was able to fix it, $60 per hour, if not, the standard repair charge for looking at it.

In your case, the customer should have backed up. At the very least, a second hard drive that somehow mirrored the main one would suffice, although off site backups are much more secure(just ask anyone who had data stored in the WTC and forget to back up off site). Since she didn't, charge your usual rate for *all* the hours you spent on this. If nothing else, it'll still come out cheaper than if she sent the drive to a recovery place(make sure you mention this to her), she still has her data(which is invaluable), and you taught her a few lessons about backing up(also invaluable). Sadly, I think the majority of home users make no backups of any kind, not even for documents they create, and this is really kind of silly. CD-RW drives are dirt cheap(I picked up a 48X-12X-48X at CompUSA last week for $30 after rebates), CD-R media is under 10 cents, and even CD-RW is reasonably priced(less than $1/GB). There is just no excuse for not backing up nowadays.

 

[CougTek]

Such is the price of ignorance...

 

[Tannin]

I wouldn't charge for the four hours, not unless it was on-site and I couldn't do anything else while it ran. But I would charge the normal rates for everything else, and then add a premium for (a) having the appropriate tools to hand, which cost me a lot of money, and (b) having the nous to spend that money on the tools. How much? Depends on the customer and the circumstances. For a blow-in, quite a lot. For one of my best regulars, I might not charge at all (especially in they decide to buy another new system from me).

Some years ago, I spent quite some time working out (a) how to fix a common win95/Win98 boot problem - deleted or corrupt files in root dir, all of which are +R +H +S - and not easy to get at or well-documented, and (b) writing a batch file that does the trick in seconds (where doing it manually took some little while and some little skill). Now I can fix that common problem in as long as it takes to boot off floppy disc and type the name of a batch file. Should I charge for 1 minute of my time? Hell no! I spent hours working out how to do that (and I used some of those years of accumulated experience and study to do it, also). Usually, I charge $A20 (which is still pretty good $$ for one minute's work). Otherwise, if I like them I might tell them that this one is on me (all good, useful goodwill - think of it as a really cheap way of getting some very effective advertising) or else (if they are PITAs), $A45.

(By the way, don't ever under-rate the value of a happy customer, even one who won't ever need to buy anything from you again - everyone has a brother, a friend, a sister-in-law, and one or another of those will have money to spend. This sort of word-of-mouth brings you the best customers of all: the ones who walk into your shop already knowing that they are going to buy from you, it's just a matter of deciding which particular thiing they are going to get.)

In your shoes, Merc, I guess I'd charge a flat fee for the data recovery. No less than $US100, but (unless it was on-site) not the full hourly rate either. I'd also manage to pass on the message (usually without ever saying so in words) that this is a rather special price, out of the goodness of my heart, and because the customer is such a nice person).

 

[Mercutio]

It was on-site. In a town I'd never been in before. With a person I had no pre-existing relationship with (i.e. I'm still not sure why she called me in particular). I did end up taking the drive home to try to snag the last of the data off it, but it doesn't look good.
Obviously, I've moved on from her little project, but it is occupying one of two positions at my "bench", leaving me a bit cramped for the couple of builds I'm doing this weekend.

 

[GIANT]

Even though I have rarely ever freelanced, the incident with the "486 Lady" back memories of a Pentium Pro system that I built for a doctor (MD).

The Pentium Pro was the fastest baddest X86 around at the time and this guy wanted just that -- the latest and greatest computer to replace his ailing 6MHz IBM AT (the first version of the AT ran at 6MHz the last at 8MHz). The only weird thing that I had to deal with was that he ABSOLUTELY refused to part with his ancient WordStar 2.0 word processor and dBase II. Wordstar 2.0 would not run on any later version of PC/MS-DOS than version 3.2. Later versions of Wordstar for DOS might have worked with DOS 5.0 or 6.22, but apparently there were changes in later Wordstar versions that he didn't like.

So, here was a 200 MHz Pentium Pro (AMI mobo), 16 MB of RAM, ATI VGA Wonder, and a 1.2 GB IDE hard drive (er... Quantum). This "monster" 1.2 GB hard drive was partitioned with 20+ 32 MB partitions, because 32 MB was the partition size limit with DOS V3.30 on down.

In the end he loved his Pentium Pro box. Wordstar and dBase II loaded in an instant, which was a far cry from his yellowing semi-ailing IBM AT.

 

[honold]

i run into these kinds of situations fairly often. if i'm actually forced to sit around and stare at the walls someplace, i'll bill more for it, but not my full rate. i usually bring a game boy or something to do if i know it's going to happen.

if i'm doing remote stuff (like fixing an exchange server after a disk crash like i'm doing now) i charge even less for the 'blah' time. it's really just a matter of feel.

just be reasonable. i'm sure you know what the appropriate rate is already and you're just overthinking it.

i wouldn't consider recovery of your software investment in the bill unless you bought it for the expressed purpose of solving this problem. as an aside, is the software licensed for infinite systems?

 

[time]

You haven't told us about her ability to pay.

If it was a corporation, the question of how much would not arise. But I think you need to use a little discretion with very small businesses and individuals. Other trades and professions often do.

I agree with Tannin that you should charge a separate fee for the actual data recovery; that would be industry-standard. Remember also that although the software cost you $800, the customer could have bought the same software for $199 (single license).

Even though it is in a different town etc, I would be looking to encourage the customer to provide future referrals or work. IMO, it's about the only way you can justify time-intensive jobs like this.

 

[Mercutio]

The software is licensed to a single technician. I can install and use the software on as many PCs as I want, as long as it's only on one PC at any one time. I'm sort-of waiting for version 7 to see if I'll get a free or reduced-cost upgrade, though.
Mostly I've used it for "favor" stuff - getting data off bad floppies and such (it's a marvelous program, even just for that). In this particular case it appears that I'm going to get about 50% of the 14GB (I think) of data on the drive back.

In the past when I've done data recovery it's been a tooth-and-nail thing involving raw-reading the disk drive or poking the FATs back into correctness or something, where I could honestly say I "earned" my pay.

 

[Cliptin]

I agree that it depends on whether you were in a situation to do other work in the mean time or not.

I have run into a similar problem in the past. I was required to coordinate my systems integration work with another company that made the custom business software. Should I charge for the time I'm waiting for the other company to call me back.

I was at the customers office and I was waiting for a bug fix so I charged.

 

[Tannin]

When I'm stuck and unsure of what is a fair thing, I do this:

First, I think charging the full whack. ($400, let's say.) This pleases the accountant in me, but makes me feel guilty about sticking the poor end-user for a large sum.

Next, I think about not charging at all for it (or, depending on circumstances, just charging my cost for the parts - whatever is the lowest sum I could possibly justify). This makes me feel bad about not getting paid for my work, and guilty about not bringing in money to pay Kristi and David and Michael and feed my cats (because I am responsible to my staff and myself, not just my customers).

Now (in a manner of speaking) I hold the two potential bills (for $400 and $0), one in each hand, and feel the weight of guilt on the one hand and on the other. I know damn well that I won't ever feel right about this job - no matter what I do I'll still feel at least one sort of guilt, usually both. Now I pick a sum somewhere in-between the two extremes, and compare the guilts again. Is one bigger than the other? Adjust the charge a little more. I don't keep doing this until the conflicting guilts dissapear - that will never happen - I keep doing it until I can't tell which one I feel worse about anymore. And that price is the best price I can set.

Maybe it's half-way (in numeric terms) between the two extremes, maybe it's not. Maybe it's $200, maybe it's $380, maybe it's $10. Doesn't mattter: it's the price at which I feel equally bad in both directions.

Then, right awawy, I decide to charge that amount and forget about it. I've done the best I can, made the decision, and there is nothing more to be said about the question.

No more guilt.

Next question, please.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Had that same decision to make last week. Went to someone who had problems printing, somehow the driver popped out and needed reinstalling. While I was working the lady told me that the machine (P2-300/64mb) is continually crashing etc, even though it appeared to be well maintained (i.e. not a truckload of shortcuts, Bonzi buddies, and 500 different apps in the start menu) etc.

She said she'd do anything to make it as reliable as possible because she has lost xxxx hours of productivity every time something goes wrong and this is her work machine etc etc. The machine was running Win95 (presumably one of the first P2s), so I suggested that if she wants it to be reliable as possible independant of price that she should install something like Windows 2000 or XP on it, but warned her it would not be cheap.

She said she'd think about it and called me the next day saying she'd bought an XP disk, along with a 128mb stick of sdram. So I got there, started the install, and sat there looking at the progress bar creep up for over an hour.

Called my boss to ask what he thought I should charge, and ended up charging half rate, made it clear to her that this was a special price as I was doing nothing all this time, despite using an hour and a half of my time during which I could have been doing something else.

In the end she wrote out a cheque for the full amount and insisted I accept it :wink:

 

[Cliptin]

When I'm stuck and unsure of what is a fair thing, I do this:

It's a lot clearer when although you are only sitting and minding the keys it is something the customer doesn't know how to do and by being off site you can't accept work from additional customers.

I liked the bit about responsibility to your employees. In a one man operation this would be you only but the principle still applies.

 

[Bozo]

I would get the impresion that some told the '486 lady' about your business. (did she mention where she heard about you?) Maybe one of your customers? You could ask her if this was a referal. You don't want to lose a regular customer and posibly a new one.

Anyway, check out other places that do data recovery and see what they charge. Maybe you can get a 'feel' for the correct charge.

After this, I would post your rates for various jobs so no one is confused.

Bozo

 

[jtr1962]

On site I definitely wouldn't hesitate to charge full rate. At home I would allow some leeway, depending upon several factors-possibility of repeat business, ability to pay, possible referrals, whether or not they were a PITA, how much of a rush the job was, whether or not I'm being paid cash with no receipts, etc. However, my cardinal rule is that if I'm on-site(which almost never happens in my line of work) I would charge full rate for every hour I need to there. If I want to take a lunch or dinner break, naturally I won't charge for that. Also, if I need to travel I expect all expenses paid-travel, lodging, food, in addition to my hourly fee. Although it hasn't happened yet since I've been on my own, I would insist on getting paid for all hours that I'm not sleeping on a job where I needed to stay overnight in a hotel room. In fact, last time I was working for someone else and had to make a few such excursions to train people in other offices, I insisted upon(and got) 10 hours overtime pay per day on the basis that I only sleep about 6 hours, and so needed to be paid for the other 18 since I couldn't do anything else. Needless to say, I was only sent on overnight trips whenever it was absolutely necessary, which suited me just fine because I hated it. No long trips, either, since I absolutely refuse to get on an airliner(the company wasn't about to pay me umpteen hours of overtime while I would be taking Amtrak cross country for 3 days each way).

In the end, it's a judgement call and an art, as many here have mentioned. Allow a bit more leeway if this is a small business. If it's a large company like M$, I would just charge the full rate or more regardless. They can certainly pay, and since most large companies have so many contractors it's doubtful you would get a callback or a referral regardless of what you charged, or the kind of work you did. You'll probably be just another small line item in their miscellaneous expenses budget.

Just one caveat, though. If your bill adds up to over $600, and you're not going to be doing any more work for the company this year, reduce it slightly, say to $590, that way they don't need to send you a 1099. It helps at tax time. Legally, a company doesn't have to send you a 1099 if you do less than $600 of work for them, and most won't because it's more paperwork. This leaves you on your own whether or not to report the income come tax time. Although I've never encountered it since I've never made much so far, this might come in handy if you're about to jump tax brackets, and will get stuck paying 36% on all your income versus the 28% you might pay if you had made a few dollars less. For the same reason, I used to turn down overtime late in the year once I was getting close to the 28% bracket. No sense forking over another 13% of *all* my income to the government just because I made a few dollars more.

 

[honold]

bracket?

you're taxed in ranges, for (wrong) example:

10-20,000 = 5%
20-30,000 = 10%
30-40,000 = 15%
etc

so if you made 20k, you get taxed 5%
if you made 25k, you get taxed 5% of 20k, then 10% of 5k

 

[jtr1962]

bracket?

you're taxed in ranges, for (wrong) example:

10-20,000 = 5%
20-30,000 = 10%
30-40,000 = 15%
etc

so if you made 20k, you get taxed 5%
if you made 25k, you get taxed 5% of 20k, then 10% of 5k

I haven't looked at a tax table in quite some time but I remember when I did my taxes last time I worked for someone else around 1990 that there were huge jumps when your changed tax brackets. For example, there may have been a line that said taxable income $21901 to $22000(tax $3293) followed by the next line $22001 to 22100(tax $6174). Yes, if your taxable income was $22001 instead of $22000 you paid $2881 more in taxes(not accurate numbers but they illustrate the point). If they've changed it to work as you've said then it's about time but it worked the other way for years, probably because the other way is too complex for many people to calculate. There were also similar huge jumps in the state and local rates, so all told, you might get socked with $4000 more in taxes for earning another dollar. I remember one of my cousins actually took 3 weeks unpaid time off in December because he was about to "jump" tax brackets.

BTW, sadly my tax bracket has been 0% since I've been in business for myself. I'm just not very aggressive soliciting business, and currently have one main customer that I do 99% of my work for. There just doesn't seem to be much demand(that I'm aware of) for my skills. Or maybe I'm not much of a salesperson. I haven't tried having a website to solicit business. I'm not able or willing to pay for more traditional forms of advertising.

 

[honold]

afaik, that kind of tax behavior has never been the case for non-affluent (e.g. 200k+) people

 

[Cliptin]

afaik, that kind of tax behavior has never been the case for non-affluent (e.g. 200k+) people

I can confirm that taxation was as you suggest back to at least '94. I got the impression that it has been this way for awhile.

 

[Santilli]

DATA RECOVERY is expensive

Around here, the SF area, it's SO expensive it isn't worth doing, unless your income was dependent on it.

I currently don't have much that I couldn't loose on my harddrives that isn't backed up.

I think people fail to respect you if you give your services away.

An old addage from my mom is if the service is free, you get the respect they paid for. You want attention? Charge 200 bucks an hour for advice, and the person will listen.

In other words, I'm sure she was told about needing a backup system, and just couldn't afford, or refused to do it.

If you charge a lower rate for the data recovery, she will think that she can do it again, waste yours, or someone elses' time, and get the same rate.

While I understand your position, I think using your data recovery program is different then a business charging for a reinstall of an operating system, while they do 5 other jobs, as the OS installs.

Since we have few data recovery places around here, the ones that do exist charge a lot of money. Supply and demand.

You might also consider this.

Did you charge her for travel time to the location?

GS