To list or not to list...prices

[therealcrazy8]

I have been really battling this. I'm not sure if I should list my prices or not on my website. I have a couple trains of thought on it and can't decide which to follow. Currently I DO have them listed, but I have been thinking of pulling them off. One of the reasons is because I don't have EVERYTHING listed for my service costs and not sure if I should.

To have them posted: Shows transparency on my costs and with how I have things written up, they can see what's included in that cost. It weeds out the "I only wan't to pay you $20 for $200 worth of work" clients, Do I list the details I have for each of the services like I do now? Do I list [just] the prices for all services? Maybe just in a PDF form?

To not have them posted: Granted, we don't want the "I only wan't to pay you $20 for $200 worth of work" clients, but maybe having them reach out to me for a service and have that initial contact is better than no contact even if they don't have me perform any service? I know at times I can be the "well they don't have prices posted, so I'm not really THAT interested. Ill go somewhere else and see if they have a price for what I need." guy. Maybe not having them posted could push "those guys" away as well?

As I am sure you can tell, this has been a battle for me. What are your guys' thoughts on this? I'm sure it's a "whatever works for you" or "do whatever you want to do, it's not a big deal either way" kind of situation, so what's your guys' thoughts about it?

Thank you

 

[Krynn72]

You'll find that Technibble as a whole is just as conflicted about it as you are. I'm of the opinion that its fine to post prices for your very systematized jobs, but any that could remotely be open-ended I'd say put it as "call for a quote" type of deal. Virus removal, tune ups, SSD upgrades, RAM upgrades, N&P with data saves, etc go ahead and write out the price. You should have these things automated and very procedural so it has very slim chance of taking a long time to do.

Troubleshooting Outlook issues, or email issues in general, or wifi issues... hell naw. At best put down your hourly rate, but even then people don't like to see hourly rates and may not call you to find out what it would really entail. For these sorts of things its best to get them to call you, give you some basic info, and then give an estimate based on what they say.

 

[mraikes]

You can't please everyone. I don't list prices and have no idea if that actually works against me. Even though my pricing is pretty much fixed rate, except hourly for onsite, and therefore doesn't change from one customer to the next, I'd still rather they call me and learn about their problem before telling them the probable cost of repair.

My rates are not high by Technibble standards and I rarely to never hear someone say "that's too much" or try to talk me down after being told the cost. Maybe that's a bad sign! But a topic for another thread.

I'm sure I miss out on customers that want to know that number right up front and call my competitors who post prices instead of me. But then again, maybe those are the overly price-conscious customers that I may not want anyway.

I like that someone calls me because they want something fixed and chose me because they liked my website, or were referred to me, and not just because they think I'm the cheapest based on a quick Google search.

 

[Mr. Ingram's Computer Repair & Shoppe]

I post for my most requested services. such as:
virus removal
performance tune-up
nuke-n-pave
data backup

the rest I just makeup as I go along...

 

[Markverhyden]

Having come from a business environment for the first 15 years of my working life I don't really see the need to publish pricing per se. But having spent a few years at CompUSA I can see where retail/consumer customers want those numbers up front. Personally I don't put my prices up. One thought is why not put up some simple pricing, say you onsite hourly rate and then indicate you may be able to offer flat rate pricing depending on the the job.

 

[callthatgirl]

I do and always have, I like people seeing it and knowing. Some don't see my rates and they call and tell me their problems and when I say my rates, they decide to go elsewhere. I am training myself to do more upfront with the fees before I listen for 12 min. Thinking of adding my rates to my banner now!

 

[fencepost]

I've been tempted to put together a page with managed services plans including pricing, along with a companion page of "Why are Managed Services plans so expensive?" that covers some of the costs - along with basic business costs including staff training, etc. there's RMM software, antivirus software, possibly separate patch management tools, possibly separate remote access software, backup software and storage, etc. There's also staff time to monitor and address issues flagged by the monitoring, AV or backup software as well as time spent responding to any user-reported problems either remotely or in-person. Depending on plans, there may also be costs for Office365 licensing (if being paid through the MSP), email and possibly separate spam filtering systems, UTM subscriptions, etc.

Then finish it off with something like "We've selected what we believe is a solid set of tools and quality staff to support you and your computer systems at a reasonable price and with excellent quality and security. Some of our competitors use different tools that may result in somewhat higher or lower costs to them and to you, but for comparable quality of service and features there shouldn't be a huge difference. If you're price shopping and get quotes that are wildly different from ours, please feel free to ask us about where those differences might be coming from."

Edit: Note, I'm not talking about including information on how much each particular thing costs, just "These are some of the things we pay for in order to service you appropriately."