Pricing for Flash Drive Recovery Services

[jeremyb]

What are your thoughts on NAND flash, it seems like in the USA many people don’t want to pay a livable wage considering the amount it costs for advertising and tools. Broken USB connectors were once used to average out the cost of off chip for us but now there is growing competition from people charging low-ball prices for broken connectors and high prices for off chip.

Currently, we charge by the capacity of the flash drive (in gigabytes), not by the work involved, we’ve tried a broken connector model, it did bring in more business but not enough to offset the advertising costs. Raising our prices is mixed, we get less work but the increased price offsets it.. (eg: 2x2 = 4 vs 1x4 = 4), which works but I’d rather see more volume.

My questions are, is anyone seeing any success in the NAND flash market in the USA and if so how so?

Perhaps this is a rehash of this dead thread:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=35543

[Lylor]

Dont think anybody wants to share their prices. I'm not in flash recovery, but I will do it in future only as additional service.

[lcoughey]

My flash prices are simple...perhaps not the cheapest, but certainly not the most expensive either.

Minor (logical/quick physical fix) - $350 CAD
Major (seriously broken conector/chip off/monolithic) - $900 CAD

[data-medics]

My prices are:

Logical (up to 32Gb) - $175
Logical (larger than 32Gb) - $275
Chip on Recovery (Easy) - $350
Chip on Recovery (coplex) - $450
Chip off - $500-700 depending on the case

It's a relatively small portion of our work though. HDDs are still the bread and butter of this industry. I mostly only offer it to prevent the repeat customers (such as computer shops) from going to a competitor when these cases come up.

[lauramathews]

My Pricing is 39$

[hddguy]

My Pricing is 39$

You clearly do not undertake complex cases... equipment needed is expensive to start, continued investment in software support and updates, the learning and knowledge that is required....

A simple 16GB chip off case can easily take in excess of a couple of hours to solve taking into account dumping time, error correction, analysis of internal page structures, removal of modification algorithms and scrambling patterns, removal of erroneous bytes, assembly and the data extraction.... realistically you cannot do such a case for $39.

A deleted file on a logically working memory stick - for this I can understand smaller outfits offering for $39, but if your anything like me we rarely see the simple ones anymore

[Spildit]

My Pricing is 39$

For chip-off cases as well ? Or just for "logic" recovery like running R-Studio and scan for files on the pen drive ?

For logic recovery it's a very realistic price.

[rogfanther]

Probably just a troll

[Spildit]

Probably just a troll

I wouldn't mind to charge $39 to recover deleted data with R-STUDIO or something like that from a "small" pen drive ...

[data-medics]

Probably just a troll

I wouldn't mind to charge $39 to recover deleted data with R-STUDIO or something like that from a "small" pen drive ...

Nah, it's not worth it. The average customer is going to waste 30-40 minutes of your front desk person's time. Another half hour of your time, plus the time it takes to do the actual project. I touch nothing for less than $175. That's my minimum cost of accepting a customer...period. If I was just given a stack of 1000 small thumb drives and able to do nothing but the work, sure I'd do it for that price. But dealing with customers eats up precious time, so it's not worthing letting cheap-o stuff eat up all your time that could be used actually making money.

[Spildit]

Probably just a troll

I wouldn't mind to charge $39 to recover deleted data with R-STUDIO or something like that from a "small" pen drive ...

Nah, it's not worth it. The average customer is going to waste 30-40 minutes of your front desk person's time. Another half hour of your time, plus the time it takes to do the actual project. I touch nothing for less than $175. That's my minimum cost of accepting a customer...period. If I was just given a stack of 1000 small thumb drives and able to do nothing but the work, sure I'd do it for that price. But dealing with customers eats up precious time, so it's not worthing letting cheap-o stuff eat up all your time that could be used actually making money.

I was thinking more about the lines of getting those pen drives from people over the internet ...

[Spildit]

I was thinking more about the lines of getting those pen drives from people over the internet ...

Or for a computer repair shopt, etc ....

The repair shop would deal with the client and the data recovery guy would just grab the pen, recover what he could and send the pen back to the computer store....

[rogfanther]

Yeah, when you can be free of that kind of work ( dealing with customer, answering phone, etc ) , one can charge lower prices.

[Lobbykash]

[spam links removed by moderator]

This is what I call perfect pricing. It's almost right in the middle. Which means you're probably helping most ppl out or the largest sector of the market. Was this the thinking behind it? If yes than Salute!

[lcoughey]

Thanks. Yes, we thought things out very carefully... we can't please everyone, but we try to please most.