A Hypothetical Thought and Question

Let me paint you a picture – I want your input on this one.

Let’s say I was able to offer my knowledge to others for a price – I know, not hard to imagine for anyone who I’ve already helped. For completeness let’s just say I had my own business that helped people fix their computers when they broke down. I was able to remove virus infections, diagnose hardware problems, install and upgrade components – that kind of thing. To me these things are fairly easy, but to others they may seem daunting. That’s the great thing about knowing people – I don’t need to be able to do everything. Not everyone needs to know how to install a CPU, or to flash a new BIOS version to their video card. I can do those things. That’s the service I offer – my knowledge of how these things work and how to make a bad situation better. One could call me a professional I suppose.

Now, let’s paint a little scenario. Let’s say I was called by someone who needed help removing a virus from their computer – they weren’t sure what virus but they were seeing really strange things and they wanted me to fix it. Fine, there would of course be costs associated with my services as I’m a professional and I make my living this way. Let’s say I tell them up front that I will charge them $75.00 per hour, plus any hardware purchases required to fix their problem. I let them know that a typical virus removal usually takes no more than 1 hour, though sometimes things are worse than expected and an entire operating system re-install is required to fix the problem – something that can take upwards of 5 or 10 hours if they want me to back up their data for them. They agree to these terms – I’m working on an hourly basis now.

Intentions aside, lets say 5 days go past and they ask me what’s going on. I tell them that the work is all done and I just need to clean up the tools I used and make things squeaky clean by installing preventative software for their future use, free of charge of course. I tell them I spent 2 hours at $75.00 / hour doing the work and an additional hour travelling and discussing issues with them, their cable provider tech support, and a few others. I’d be by in the evening and a personal cheque would be fine.

I arrive and they present me with a cheque for $225.00 – 3 hours of work at $75.00. I let them know that the $75.00 / hour charge is only for technical support activities, that I charge $90.00 / hour for communications with their cable companies on their behalf and any customer conferences in person – like the one we’re having now and the one we initially had to set up this agreement. So I demand a cheque for $240.00 or I won’t bring their computer upstairs from my car. I also refuse to discuss things unless they agree to pay me $90.00 / hour (minimum 1 hour) for this customer conference we’re going to have about the costs accrued by my expert help. I put my hand on the doorhandle, getting ready to leave.

They quickly do a little math and decide that paying the extra $15.00 is cheaper than arguing with me and paying the $90.00 minimum fee. So they write up a new cheque while I bring their computer upstairs from my car.

Now I ask you – what just happened? I mean I obviously just made an easy $15.00 by leveraging the fact that I have their computer and they can’t do without it. But in the big picture, what is this kind of action by a professional called?

Was that extortion? Maybe a little fleecing? Can one call this fraud?

Seriously – what is the correct term here? Perhaps it should be called SOP for some professionals?