We work extremely hard at keeping our prices competitive; we are not the most expensive, but also not the cheapest either. We have three options available for all our customers :-

Onsite Visits to your home/business premises and you are located within the Plymouth City central area we charge £25.00 for the first hour, then £5.00 for each 15min thereafter.

Onsite Visits to your home/business premises and you live on the outskirts of Plymouth, we charge £30.00 for the first hour, then £5.00 for each 15min thereafter.

Home Visits You are also welcome to bring your laptop/desktop unit to our office for servicing, this is charged at £20.00 for the first hour, then £5.00 each 15min thereafter.

Ok, simply call us, or email us, however calling in is the quickest method. The chances are you'll talk directly to the engineer that will help you. We start by asking you what the problem is, and some basic information about your system (for example; what Windows version ie XP, Vista, etc., whether you have broadband, etc.) - we appreciate that some people don't know much about their computer which is fine; it's not imperative to have this, it just helps us more to assess the problem.

Once we think the problem is within our powers to solve, we then quote our charges (see above). If this is all agreeable with you, we then inform you of our basic callout conditions (more on this later) and give you an estimated time slot in our diary that is mutually convenient. We normally quote you a 30min time period to allow for job overuns and general traffic issues.

We then take your full address, telephone number (home or mobile). We need your contact number so we can get in touch on the day of your appointment to inform you of our actual arrival time (especially if we are running late or indeed early).

The appointment is then confirmed in our diary. Please be aware that we charge a late/missed/cancelled appointment fee of £25.00/£30.00 (depending on location) should we arrive at your home/business premises and you are not in or don't need us anymore but failed to cancel. In this event, we will leave a business calling card, and also call your contact number to leave a message on your voicemail if you have one to prove we've visited. See "missed appointments" below.

Most companies that offer their customers "fixed fee" computer repairs tend to go for a cheap "workaround" so as to move on to their next paying customer. They don't have the same amount of time as we will give to properly solve the problem at hand, and although you think you've had a good price, you may find the problem soon re-appears and you need to call someone out again to fix the original problem!

We don't work like that, we start with an initial hour's charge, then simply charge for each 15minute time period (after the first hour) if required. That way, we can methodically and thoroughly work on the problem at hand. It means that you have your computer properly fixed for perhaps 1-2 hour's work. Having said that, we don't "take our time" on jobs either to get more money; if we know a job will be complete within the hour, we will tell you.

At present we don't charge V.A.T., but of course, this could change in the future the busier we get.

We accept the following methods of payment;

• Cash
• Cheques (supported by valid cheque guarantee card within the account limit) and should be made payable to "Mike Pitches"
• We do not accept credit cards currently, although we are considering this as a future possibility.
• We do not offer any form of credit - ie 30/60/90 day terms. All completed jobs MUST be paid on the same day.

No, we do not provide discounts of any kind. All completed jobs are fully chargeable.

A very difficult one to answer this and we've given it a great deal of thought before answering...

Some large, major companies will refuse to visit you if you smoke whilst they're at your premises, however, as the Law stands, self employed trades such as mobile computer technicians are not covered legally to insist that customers don't smoke while we are at your home (business premises are now 100% smoke free anyway).

What we would politely ask is because your home is our workplace for the duration of our visit to you, for health reasons, we would be very grateful if you didn't smoke in the same room as where we are working. Thank you for your understanding.

Unfortunately, this is very difficult to do. Although we can appreciate that you have your jobs/errands to do, we cannot give accurate arrival times, purely because of such factors such as jobs booked in before yours taking longer than expected, or traffic congestion. When we accept your booking, we give an estimated time frame.

For example, you book us for a 10am appointment, we will suggest to you between 9:45 and 10:15am, whilst still working for 10am. This gives us some margin for working with. Similarly, if we are running late, we will call you when we are on the way to let you know accordingly.

It is VERY rare that we have to rebook you on another day if you are the last callout and we run out of time, but it has happened, and we will do our very best to offer another appointment as soon as our diary allows and you are happy with.

We appreciate that nothing is guaranteed in life, and circumstances do occur that mean you need to cancel a booked appointment with us.

This isn't a problem with us, however;

• If you cancel with less than 2 hours notice, and because we may be already on the way to you, we will still charge for the first hour's work as a unauthorised cancellation fee of £25/£30. We don't want to do this, but we are running a self-employed business and cannot afford to be messed around by the few thoughtless people that don't care whether they've informed us or not.
• If you cancel with little notice, BUT, you give a good reason, such as a family emergency or similar, simply re-book your appointment within 5 working days and we will waive the cancellation charge.
• If after an initial cancellation, you then re-book, BUT still cancel/or aren't home when we arrive, we will again leave a calling card to prove we visited, but we will now no longer consider you as a future customer (you could keep doing this), PLUS we will also warn other computer engineers in case you decide to contact them. Although it is rare, it has happened, we currently have 3 ex-customers that are blacklisted. We wouldn't like others being messed around any more than we like it.

Lots of people have pets at home, and we are animal lovers ourselves. However we would ask you that if you are a dog owner, and your pet is either very large or perhaps a little on the boistrous side, that you keep them away from the area we are working in to avoid any potential accidents.

We would also ask that you refrain from allowing your dog (large or small) to jump up at us when we arrive. Thank you for your understanding.

We will require you to stay at your home/business premises for the duration of our visit, if only to asisst if we need information such as software serial numbers, username/password information, etc.

It will also provide cover to us, if in the unfortunate event that your home/premises gets broken into after we've gone and you've gone out, we cannot be held responsible for any damage or missing items. Probably would never happen, but not guaranteed...

Recent research has shown us that not many independent computer engineers are supporting anything less than Windows XP now. Although technology has moved on, and most computer users have Windows XP or Vista, we do have customers that still use Windows 98, or even the now very old Windows 95. We will still support these older Operating Systems as best we can, although some programs and software drivers may be hard to obtain. Please contact us if you have any questions about this.

If you decide that you want to order a new computer or other hardware such as a printer, scanner, etc., we will of course be very pleased to assist you. If possible, we only use local suppliers to cut down on waiting time plus it keeps our prices very competitive. Simply let us know what you want (or think you want!), and your budget and we'll advise the best package to suit your needs. Market prices rise and fall all the time (daily in some cases) so we'll always contact our suppliers and attempt to quote that day's price.

Most custom build desktop PC's can be ordered and built within a 10 day turnaround.

Please note that we DO NOT build computers ourselves, we simply order on your behalf based on your requirements. We DO however supply items such as hard drives, CD drives, etc., and can install these for you.

Yes! Unlike some companies that only install/configure equipment if sold by them, we will do our best to set up any hardware that you've bought or perhaps had as a present for from someone. Our usual charges will apply. If you've got a new modem or router, don't forget to ask about our FREE internet security suite of programs.

Ok, this doesn't happen very often, but we've been asked in the past to connect a wireless broadband signal that originates from someone else's house! The scenarios here from our point of view are thus;

• The unauthorised use of a wireless signal is both illegal and unethical, therefore we will not support this, even if you say that the other person has agreed to it.
• If we are called out to create/fix a wireless connection in good faith and we find you've not been honest about your wireless signal source, we will not accept the job, and we will also charge you an hour's labour (£25/£30 depending on location).

Unfortunately, most of the time, our answer to this would be 'No', purely because our schedule is normally booked up at least one day in advance. However there may be the odd occasion where we can help. Best thing is to call in, and if we can we will. Please call in before 8.30am Monday to Friday to see if we can visit you on the same day. Failing that, we will oblige with an appointment at the next mutually convenient time/date.

We seem to get several calls asking if we repair Playstations or other games consoles. Unfortunately we only repair PC's. Best bet for games console repairs is to approach the original shop or supplier.

We operate a No Fix, No Fee option if the following applies:

• We cannot provide a satisfactory solution or advice to the problem at hand;

Situations that we cannot control:
Broadband Issues (Internet connection & emails) - If your ISP or telephone line provider is causing the problem, and thus should provide the solution. We will of course ensure that your computer isn't at fault first and foremost. If you wish for us to talk to your telephone provider and/or your ISP's customer service agents to try and solve the problem over the phone with them, we can do, but this is chargeable regardless of the outcome. A lot of our customers prefer us to talk to the CSR's because we tend to understand them better on a technical level!

Severe virus/spyware infection - If you computer is so badly infected that it becomes impractical both financially and from a timescale view, to try and scan for and cure the problem(s), we may ask you if we can re-format the hard drive and re-install Windows and other software. This will require licence codes and passwords. If you don't have the relevant information, we cannot perform this recovery. Time spent so far to that point is chargeable.

- We had one instance that we were unable to install Windows after a HDD problem, which was down to a faulty keyboard (the 'F8' key wasn't working), as it happens 'F8' is required to accept the Windows operation agreement. No other keyboard was available to try, therefore our No Fix, No Fee didn't apply as it was circumstances beyond our control.

Other Issues - What we don't attempt to repair:
Hardware elements of Printers - we only provide software support
Laptops - we can and do replace/diagnose HDD's where we can gain access. Some models make it very awkward to locate internal components. All software problems are considered.