Rates & Policies

Rates and Hours

techbuddy charges $80 per hour for computer support services. Other services have different billing rates. We bill in 15-minute increments. We are normally available from 8:30AM to 5:30PM Pacific Time, Monday through Friday.

New customers get 20 buddybucks added to their accounts. This means your first 15 minutes with techbuddy are free! If you refer a new customer to us (who generates at least 1 billable hour), we will give you 20 buddybucks as a thank you!

We also do a certain amount of pro bono work for nonprofit groups and for individuals with tight budgets and extreme need.

Subscriptions

We also offer a subscribers program. If you subscribe at the $20/month level, the billing increment drops to 10 minutes, and at the $40/month level it drops to 5 minute increments. Using our over-the-net technology we can often fix a problem in a few minutes, so smaller billing increments can translate to a significant savings if you have a number of small problems to fix. Subscriptions are pre-billed on a three-month basis. Unused time rolls over and you can even share some of your time with your family or friends.

On-site Service

Most of our services (80%+) are delivered online – over the phone and on the net. Online help is faster for us and cheaper for you; many times we can fix a problem in a matter of minutes. However, when hardware is acting up, or your network connection inexplicably disappears, then a site visit may be necessary.

Site visits within 20 minutes of Sebastopol have a one hour minimum charge. From 20 to 40 minutes there is a minimum 1.5 hour charge. More than 40 minutes has a 2 hour minimum. In general, we don't travel to sites more than one hour from our location.

For new customers who cannot connect to the network, we offer a one-time free 30-minute travel radius.

After Hours

We work out of our home office, so it is possible to reach us outside of normal hours. If it's not an emergency, we would really prefer to talk to you during our normal hours. Warning: If you call in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner (as someone did), the rates are 200% of normal, assuming that Peter will talk to you at all. (He gets very grumpy when pulled away from the dinner table.)

Billing Policies

For new customers, we bill on completion of service.

For established customers, we bill biweekly for all work performed in the previous 14 days. All invoices are due and payable upon receipt. Customers with outstanding invoices more than one month old will have all work associated with their account suspended.

Satisfaction Guaranteed

We take pride in our work, and your satisfaction is guaranteed. If we can't fix your problem, there is no charge – with one exception, virus removal. For more on this, see our Virus Removal page.