Hey guys, sorry for posting and dissapearing. OK, problem is now OK. I charged the guy $100 plus parts, then explained that I was doing a favor to Matt and that my normal fee schedule was $65 an hour plus a $25 trip charge due to his being out of my regular "delivery" area. He seemed totally cool with that, and asked for my card so he could call me directly next time.

It's not that I feel bad about charging companies bigger bucks than that to fix their issues, it's just that in this particular case, it felt more like he was just this old guy and I was taking money out of his pocket instead of just becoming a necessary business expense. Today, as I looked around, I suddenly came to realize that this guy makes WAAAAY more cheese than I do, and $100 comes from the company, not him. Regardless of the fact that he owns the company.

Besides, I also came to realize that he wasn't paying me for the actual labor of replacing the fan. He was paying me because I CAN look at his computer and say "That's definitely the problem, and you'll be fine if we just replace that". Not to mention all the work it saved him from having to do if he had to re-input a days worth of sales from payslips.

It's just hard to abstract from the $ / hour model when that's really not what you're dealing with. It's really about taking something that doesn't do what it's supposed to do and making it do what it's supposed to again. Kinda like when you take your car in to get the brakes done and they charge you for $12 in parts and $300 in labor for something that you KNOW only really took them 45 minutes, because they're so good at it. But it's worth it to me, since it'd take me 18 hours to do, since I suck at cars.

Oh, and as a rule of mine, if I can't fix your problem, I don't charge you. Not a dime. And if I feel like I should have been able to fix a problem in three hours, but it takes me nine, I only charge for three. Especially if I pull a stupid and cause myself a lot more grief than necessary. (This happened once. I completely farked this guys exchange server and had to rebuild it by hand. Total PITA, but it was MY fault, not his, and it could have been avoided, had I been more careful) You would probably be surprised how much business this particular rule has bought me in the past. People do NOT like to feel like you're taking them for a ride, but it's become so common, that they're genuinely surprised when I work for nine hours straight, fix the problem and hand them a bill for three hours. They invariably ask why and I get to tell them that I don't make other people pay for my mistakes. All of a sudden I'm not this young smart-ass kid that charges way too much, I'm the computer guy they trust not to tell them they need to replace their computer when all they really need is a new fan, and suddenly I'm worth every penny.