There has been a bit of a hoo-hah around the new charges for support by Frooition (on top of the purchase price and monthly subscription charge) for their eBay templates and associated services. In all fairness they needed to charge for support, but I do wonder what level of support is provided for these amounts.

I quote:

EMAIL & PHONE SUPPORT:
Emergency Email & Phone Support Response Rates: £199 per hour.

What Does This Cover? Urgent critical work that requires a rapid response.
Response Time: 1 working day*

Now, that’s kinda of expensive. If you pay 3 support members £20K a year that is a little over £30 an hour. Plus *costs n profits* lets round that up to £50.
£50 per hour is normally what consultants charge. I charge £15-20 per hour, but that’s because I am new to consulting.

Next:

Standard Ad Hoc Service Support Response Rates: £99 per hour.

What Does This Cover? One-off / un-scheduled work that requires a fast response time.
Response Time: 5 working days*

Five working days is a long time to wait for something costing you £99 per hour. Five days is not fast in the e-commerce world, not in my e-commerce world anyway.

I would probably price this up at around £30 per hour as you would be able to manage the requests better and prioritise clients.

But the next bit takes the biscuit, the whole Marks and Spencer’s Belgian selection…

GENERAL SUPPORT / REPORT A PROBLEM:
If your issue is not urgent and of more of a general nature then why not log a “general” ticket.
Although we can’t guarantee to respond to these tickets, we would really appreciate any comments or suggestions you have.

Every support request is assigned a unique ticket number which you can use to track the progress and responses online.
For your reference we provide complete archives and history of all your support requests.

Which means that for two of my clients any template/store issues will not be resolved to make sure they end up paying for it. My main client is moving away from Frooition design and I am glad because I am the one who has to fix things and contact support charging my £20 per hour……

So to answer my question, what should you charge for support??

What your clients can afford and what you can sensibly justify. If you are choking on support then raise the initial price of the ‘item/service’ in order to cover the labour intensity. Hidden and add on charges that are not fully disclosed or introduced later on a whim get peoples backs up!

I feel sorry for the guys/gals who will be offering Frooition support as their clients will RAPE them for there services, and it won’t be pretty.

P.S Paying someone £199 per hour to configure/programme Parcelforce shipping zones in a php based e-commerce system is well worth the money, if only I could find someone too! Oh wait, it’s me who their paying….should…..charge…more……

What would YOU charge for support? Open comments…

Comments closed now 06/05/2009