which one of you charges $15 for a service call ?

It looks like it is more of a come on to get people to let him come out and hit the monitor and PCB with a can of spray air every 2 months for $50.

Searching the phone numbers gets A LOT of hits on all sorts of listing boards and craigslist ads for a lot of different things. Seems like the guy's name is Tony (or possibly Chris, since both names pop up in ads relating to that phone number) and from all the ads I am going to assume he is the odd jobs type who makes his living reselling on craigslist and doing other random stuff.
 
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Maybe its like the $49 brake jobs.... "most brakes". Yea, if you had a new vehicle that had old pads on - we'd replace them for $49. But 9/10 jobs are going to require MUCH more $$$.
 
Maybe he can take time from his busy schedule to check his keyboard and find out why its stuck on caps. ;)

He probably uses his time at their house to make offers on those darn expensive to repair video games. "It looks like it needs a new monitor and maybe a expensive board repair. I'll give you $50 for it." "Its better than paying someone to haul it off."
 
I think that's a great ad. He'll get a lot of calls on that, and he's got a lot of room to up-sell his customers with future service and cleanings. Plus, most of the time, the calls will come in due to a repair needed, and he's free to quote whatever time he wants for the repair, and retail parts. If the homeowner has multiple machines at his home, then the maintenance can be stacked pretty easily.

Lots of businesses open with a loss leader to drive in business. We offer a super cheap price on oil changes for our customers. We lose money on every one. But we only need to convert 25% of those oil changes to another service and we've make back our money and then some. It's worth it.

No disrespect to your repair ability, Arc, but your premium service on vector monitors is not in competition with this type of ad. This guy is a jack of all trades, master of none.
 
To get experience and connect with collectors I charged $100 for a returned working games + parts. If game is not returned fixed $0. I am 1 for 2. Also it opens up swap and trade possibilities.
 
15

i bet its
wmacmonagle
i do stuff like this myself, ( i charge 20 , and then 40 per hr, ) it gets alot of new customers for buying other things, trade in older ones, ect
 
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When I was a newb, or actually more of a newb, the only people I saw around here charged $75 just for the service call. It's not that I minded paying the money, it's when they couldn't fix my games after 3-4 years that I had enough. He actually has a well worded ad and I'm sure s/he gets a lot of calls from it.
 
I was doing flat rates of 50 per monitor 100 per game plus parts.. I made way less then 25 per hour it seems like. Thats why I quit doing it for the most part. Not worth the headache.
 
Looks like bullshit, preying on the uninformed, to me.....

Cleaning every two months...A MUST.....bullshit!

Service cleaning is very important. This cleans the monitor from dust and harmful deposits that can and will give you costly repair bills.......Bullshit!

....and my favorite.....monitor repairs may need to be sent out for repairs. Something tells me....everything this guy repairs.....will be sent out.

Edward
 
Yeah that's not Bill (wmac), he doesn't have time for that. I have seen the ads every day, or sometimes, several times a day.

I thought about calling him for something tough like fixing the remote in my wall game, to see if they/he could do it.
 
I thought about calling him for something tough like fixing the remote in my wall game, to see if they/he could do it.

I bet he'd shot some Windex on it....I mean give it his service cleaning.....hit you for $65.00 and send it off for repair.:D

Edward
 
Yea, I saw his ad too...

Whatcha bet he goes out on a service call and says, well instead of fixing this, how about making it into a xx-in-1... Charges customer for the conversion/parts, keeps the old parts, resells old parts. It's a win-win-win!

A collector is not going to call this guy. A person who owns a dead game in a laundromat or restaurant has nowhere to go...they are the most likely to call this guy. Or the guy that's trying to sell his game on CL claiming that it only needs a fuse - will likely call this repair person.

Just my $ .02
 
I've done a number of service calls and I only charge $20/hr and $20/transit - but then again, I'm a pretty cool dude :cool:

Let's face it, this is a dead industry. None of those guys charging $75/hr are making a living at this, and they're probably only going out on a couple of calls a year at that rate. From a collector's perspective, I would NEVER pay anyone that kind of money to fix my machines (I don't even pay that for automotive tech, although the "going rate" is typically higher). Plus most of those so-called "technicians" don't know jack but the basics about our games and usually end up hacking some crap together to maybe make it work - for awhile. Can't say I've ever heard a single game owner positively review a local arcade or pinball repairman and want to recommend them...Unless I worked on it ;)

But back to this particular ad - Yeah, he's a moron. Not for his pricing, but because of that cleaning nonsense, and because he obviously can't rebuild a monitor since he sends them out (to someone else). Wow, you'll refer me to ACTUAL repairmen for only $25/hr?! Um, i can do that myself thanks.
 
I've done a number of service calls and I only charge $20/hr and $20/transit - but then again, I'm a pretty cool dude :cool:

Let's face it, this is a dead industry. None of those guys charging $75/hr are making a living at this, and they're probably only going out on a couple of calls a year at that rate.



I would have to respectfully disagree. I have found quite a few people willing to pay good money to have their beloved game fixed right.

I have found a few people wanting their games "shopped out" and willing to pay almost what the game is worth to have it done so their game will last another 20 years.

I don't understand why anyone would want to give away their skills and knowledge for almost free. At $15 to show up it's probably costing the guy money to be there.
 
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