3 The customers must remember your not their friends or family.
The customer?! Are you a shop/business? Do you declare tax on what you charge 'the customer'?
Get real mate! Garages/dealers charge £50+ an hour because they are a brand and have overheads to cover. Meeting someone on their/your driveway is not the same thing!!
I do agree that you don't seem to get the same advice/help from dealer/garage staff. But they're not interested in modifying your car (unless your paying). They Re paid to sell/service cars in their garage. Fellow enthusiasts ARE interested in the same car (Golfs/VAG) and so will be keen to help you.
You pay for someones skill.
At the end of the day people think things don't cost money.
My normal VCDS rate is £10 per car.. that's plug on, full scan, faults emailed to you, and any other tweaks etc that you want. Road tests are normally £20 and I will log the session and provide a write up eg in cases of overboost, lack of vacuum, stuck VNTs or whatever (mainly TDI cars).
And yet some people are like, well it's only 10 minutes on a laptop can't you do it for free sort of thing?
Well, not really no. My tools cost money, etc.
Yet saying that, most of the time I do things for free as I like to help people out.. if people want to give me a few drink tokens then that's great but if they don't I'm not going to get mad at them for it.
I do part time detailing for friends, mainly in the VW scene, and I charge around £120 for a 2 stage correction, I do believe that I am capable within my own capacity to work as a professional detailer should the opportunity present itself - currently it does not , and with my own work commitments I'm lucky to find time to do the 1 or 2 cars a month that I do currently.
People try to barter you down, and it reaches a point where it's not worth it - in materials that you use, equipment, machinery and not only that but your time.. plus fuel costs if you're travelling.
It's all very well saying, well you don't have the overheads of a unit/garage/workshop but the point being that you're paying the end result and the skill of the person doing whatever, whether it be retrofits, detailing, mechanical work, blowjobs... if you want to take it to a garage or someone else then go ahead!
Most of the time people who ask me for help doing things I will only ask for them to cover fuel, and buy me Pizza. It's very rare I ever make actual money out of people, for friends I don't mind so much, favours and exchanged all the time, but for strangers, they need to appreciate that gratitude doesn't pay a mortgage.