Attention All DR Professionals around the world - Important

[posidon]

Dear Friends
I am from India & owner of a Data Recovery company operating for 15 years.
With changing business Dynamics & Business Conditions like recession etc everyone must be facing some or other issue.
With This important Surve we will get statistics of typical charges around the World . I am sure this will be immensely help everyone as following are challenges for this business --
1) Large capex investment --- must buy , update & pay TS amount to equipment vendors
2) Stock of donor disks
3) Ever Increasing cost of managing business /Manpower etc
4) Reduced margin due to recession
5) Competition --- each and every disk I get is tried beforehand
6) Increasing size /complexity of hard disks.

I would like to give 3 case studies and customer reaction --
1) a large mnc customer ( US$ 800 Million - 1 Billion $) gave me a hard disk which was encrypted by cryptowall .As full decryption was not possible we have
recovered large data by carving (only available option) .outlook PST's were recovered and repaired.
extensive post recovery support was provided. Disk was from a very senior management person.
Despite all the efforts customer was reluctant to pay US$225
2) Typical Seagate F3 case - Translator regenerated using UDMA -E -- customer was reluctant to pay US 100
3) Complex firmware recovery case -- customer was reluctant to pay US$ 250


I would like to know how you guys charge for this typical case.
This will help to understand how much are charges around the world as well as in India. So that accordingly wither I can reduce charges or increase.
I know charges varies from country to country , but still this exercise will help to understand views of DR professionals around the world.
Request you to partiticate and give valuation in following fashion--
Country - USA
Case 1 -- US$ 250
Case 2 -- US$150
Case 3 -- US$ 500
Thank you

[HaQue]

I think the general tone of this is "what prices do you think customers will pay without too much trouble" - answer, this is not the approach. You must charge what the job is worth, otherwise you wont have a business, and therefore this wont be an issue.

getting figures from around the world also doesn't help. It has been talked about a lot here already, different countries are different, different cities in different countries are different, and different suburbs in cities can be different. Large shops will be more expensive, more overheads. small shops will be cheaper, but arguably less resources/tools/knowledge.

this is one rabitthole you don't want to go down

[athena]

I disagree with Haque.

Often I will have to process disk before giving quote --

1) Burnt PCB - You will have to arrange donor pcb change rom and then check if there is any other issue. If after doing this customer says NO then what ?
2) You spend 3 days & night and solved some case but customer did not approve.
3) In some case irrrevisible changes in firmware has t be done for diagnostics -

At a times I have same feelings like posidon whether my charges are really high or at par or I am charging too low
If we at least get some idea that for particular work XXX amount must be changed and is charged around the world then I will be confident while speaking with customer.

I am also from India & I charges following -

1) Overwritting -- Rs. 5000 for home / small business --- Rs. 10000 - for corporates
2) simple FW -- Rs.2500 - Rs. 10000
3) complex FW -- upto 15000

[labtech]

@posidon
For India, I would have expected lower quotes than what you listed. Of course, don't know your expenses. Just saying..
Based on your prices, it sounds like Coastal North America folks should charge more than they already are, hahahahaa.

Anyways, I think wasting energy on why certain individuals don't want to pay, especially in this business, is a waste of time.
Move onto the next customer. I am sure in India, there are plenty.

[LarrySabo]

In setting your prices, you can consider your costs, what your competition charges, what the customer is willing to pay, and whether your investment in money, time and effort provide sufficient reward for the expenditure. Is the investment in the business returning a profit sufficient to justify staying in the business or can you make more profit another way. You may even do it at a loss if you enjoy it immensely or if you would suffer a greater loss doing something else. I don't think it makes sense to set your prices based on what others outside your market area charge, because that's irrelevant.

[SOSdonnees]

As your customers are reluctant to pay after your data recoveries, why not getting their agreement in advance?

In some cases, like PCB swap, you know in advance approximately how much the repair will cost (search for donnor PCB, purchase of donnor PCB, work, ...). So, you can announce to your customer how much the job costs, including your margin, and ask him to pay part or all the job in advance. You can also tell him that this is a first step to repair the drive, and that the probability that the drive works after this repair is ...%.
You can also tell your customer that the drive may be other problems afterwards (eg. mechanical problems) and how much such recovery would cost. At each step, ask your customer to confirm that he agrees with the expense, and to pay something or all in advance.

If the data recovery fails, you can still give back some money and keep the one you need to cover your costs, at least furnitures.

You didn't tell if most of your customers are from India or from other countries.

[posidon]

Thank you all for expressing there views.

We cant give estimate before making thorough diagnostics and check data integrity --

I have got a Disk having PCB burnt - as per SOSdonnees I should quote customer depending upon cost of donor pcb.
If after arranging donor and changing rom I have found preamp dead or head crash then naturally cost will escalate so unless I completely analyze media and check integrity How can I give quote and ask for advance.
Further disk may have some enterprise disk encryption and data is not recoverable, How to quote customer and get advance if Data is not recoverable ?
Do you think customers from India or anywhere in the world will pay if you failed to give data ?
One can give a firm quotation with detailed data structure only.
As Labtech said to forget customer , but in country like india if I forget 8 out of 10 customers how can I survive ? I have got details of charges from all major cities in India and I am making average of the same. I will then compare it with other Asian countries and eurpoe / USA.
This will help me to know where I stand and whether other Dr professionals are also facing same issue.
We can form a group and decide on common minimum pricing so that there will not be internal competition .

[labtech]

If 8-10 are truly the numbers, then the law of nature, aka the 80/20 principle makes sense. I believe a better qualification process before doing work would definitely help out. Investing a little more in consultation will filter all those who don'y want to pay. Otherwise, dropping the price and focusing on volume is the way to go.

[HaQue]

If you don't have many customers, then pricing gets REALLY difficult. It puts you in a catch 22 situation. You are forced to take on customers that might be timewasters, jobs that wouldn't be accepted if a higher(more realistic from our side), and these jobs take up the time of things like research to be able to do better paying jobs, or takes up time better spent developing advertising, good looking websites, organising professional looking service etc..

If you start off from doing it "after work" building up a name for being a "go-to" person, and also doing lots of friends and family jobs that result in low/no payment or payment in "beer" or whatever, then breaking out of it is very hard.

There is a lot at play here, and just focusing on a few things like the actual job itself and Geographical location probably will waste time spent on other things.

Sure you definitely have to consider it, but it is IMPERATIVE that you spend time on the right things at the right time.

For example, I have done everything wrong starting my business. I can see it, but I am finding it very hard breaking out of the cycle of freebies/cheapies and making money.

A lot of people I do work for or know what I do/can do say I should be making millions, but it is one thing knowing about some tech, computers etc.. but a whole other thing monetising it.

[SOSdonnees]

I have got a Disk having PCB burnt - as per SOSdonnees I should quote customer depending upon cost of donor pcb.
If after arranging donor and changing rom I have found preamp dead or head crash then naturally cost will escalate so unless I completely analyze media and check integrity How can I give quote and ask for advance.

Again:

In some cases, like PCB swap, you know in advance approximately how much the repair will cost (search for donnor PCB, purchase of donnor PCB, work, ...). So, you can announce to your customer how much the job costs, including your margin, and ask him to pay part or all the job in advance. You can also tell him that this is a first step to repair the drive, and that the probability that the drive works after this repair is ...%.

As I told, you can explain to your customers that there are steps in a data recovery.
If the PCB has burnt component, tell them how much would it cost to replace the PCB : not only the price of the PCB, but also the price of your work. Tell your customer that this is the first thing to try but that you cannot be sure that it will suffice before trying it. From the very beginning, give and idea to your customer how much would cost more complicated repairs if they are required.

If you're in direct contact with your customers, you can explain them all the possible issues that their hard drive can possibly have. Making some pedagogy won't make your customers able to recover their data by themselves.

I believe the important thing is that your customer knows that he can finance step 1, but can renounce to step2, step 3, ... if he doesn't have the money to go further. So, the customer remains the king and you make only the steps that he's ready to finance.

You can also explain how much do software and hardware cost. People have no idea about this.
When you explain this, people better understand that your work itself is not so expensive but that you have important charges.
Tell them the price of a PC-3000 board for instance ...

As Labtech said to forget customer , but in country like india if I forget 8 out of 10 customers how can I survive ?
I have got details of charges from all major cities in India and I am making average of the same. I will then compare it with other Asian countries and europe / USA.

I don't know which are your major expenses in India and how strong is the recession you mention, but it seem that you are handling complex cases.
Maybe should you charge more for those time-wasting complex cases and if people are not ready to pay, then renounce to these cases.

Don't waste your time with clients that are reluctant to pay ; others should come sooner or later if you're working well.

[fzabkar]

We cant give estimate before making thorough diagnostics and check data integrity --

I have got a Disk having PCB burnt - as per SOSdonnees I should quote customer depending upon cost of donor pcb.
If after arranging donor and changing rom I have found preamp dead or head crash then naturally cost will escalate so unless I completely analyze media and check integrity How can I give quote and ask for advance.

A head crash is visible. A dead preamp is measurable. A competent tech should be able to identify these problems without a donor PCB.

[digitalferret]

Hi posidon

You could charge everyone $5 and you would still get people that are reluctant.

The trick isn't what to charge, it's how to prevent "reluctant customers" from taking valuable time away from those that are willing to pay.

Must agree with HaQue and Larry too.
You cannot "price up" by what customers are willing to pay and hope the quantity of work that you get leaves you in profit.
This is a recipe for disaster. You really ought to work out running costs / time first.

Some companies will find a way to vary the price to accomodate "less well off" clients by offering Economy, Regular and Urgent cases.

Business Co usually want the deal done as fast as possible and can afford to pay a business rate.
Familyman Joe can possibly get by with Standard if the work is important enough for him to need it inside 7 days.
Broke Freddy with just a few holiday photo's can take economy and pay least as he has no urgency at all 14days+ or end of current queue.

All of the above can go for any of the rates, you don't need to guess what they can afford.

This gives 3 price points (some double and double again up from economy x1 x2 x4) that cover most bases for what people can pay or are willing to.

You could also stick a refundable assessment fee on there if you want to stop people just using you as a free assessment service.

Some companies can afford to complete the repair first so they know exactly what to charge, and then negotiate with a "no thanks" customer by offering a cheaper price with a longer timescale.

These are just a few ideas, hope they are of some help. Each business though, must find it's own way and assess current local area and so on.

One thing is certain though, you can't simply price to what is popular.
If you were offering a single item for free, there would still be some that would want 2.
If you aren't making a profit, it's a hobby, not a business.

K