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Quick, call a PC ambulance! Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Eddie Skelton hopes to create a fleet of computer repair vans like this one for his company, 1HrPC, which sells rapid computer technical support for homes and businesses. 1HrPC Sales & Service comes to home or office to provide technical support By GREG STILES Mail Tribune Eddie Skelton hopes to bridge the gap between computer owners and their service needs. "People never are sure about the (tech) support line when they get off the phone," Skelton says. "What I hear people wondering if it's them, the computer or the software. Do they need to know more or is it going to keep locking up?" The erstwhile studio musician and Southern California air charter operator has launched the equivalent of a computer ambulance service, targeting home and office users. The 50-year-old Skelton says he came by his computer skill out of necessity after buying early personal computers for his Top Flight Executive Air Charter operation. "I bought an IBM so we could do word processing in the office," Skelton says. "I couldn't get anybody to work on it, so I bought a book so I could fix it and keep the girls in the office working." One thing led to another for Skelton, who bought a home in Medford in 1992 and then sold his company in 1993. "I had free time and was sort of semi-retired," Skelton says. "I found myself tinkering with computers, building a system for somebody, liked it and got into various software, how they worked and writing programs. "I was playing tennis at Ashland Racquet Club, doing a musical gig once in a while and re-evaluating life after I got divorced," Skelton says. "Word got out that I knew something about computers. People were coming up and saying 'I'm having a problem with this, can you check this out?'" When he read that there were 56 million new online customers last year, it struck him that there was a market ready and waiting. "Fifty-six million is a huge number in a shrinking economy," Skelton says. "In six months, I had been doing two or three repairs a day, all by referrals." So he put together a business plan with an eye on trends, signed up investors and launched 1HrPC Sales & Service. Skelton says lower prices have allowed people on modest incomes to get into computers, while people with them are becoming more dependent on them. "If computers are properly utilized and maintained to where they are not a burden," he says, "people will be doing more and more on them." 1HrPC has fully equipped mobile workshops, stocked with all the goodies necessary for repairs. Everything from surge protectors and floppy disks to monitors and hard drives are on board. "Our goals is to fix and repair," he says. "We don't want to compete with Circuit City and Dell. I don't think that's where the need is, but we'll still do a lot of sales." The firm has three tiers of service, from standard to one hour. Standard response costs $75 , including up to 30 minutes of on-site work. Priority response includes a set appointment time and up to an hour of on-site service. When a customer needs to be back up and running immediately, the one-hour response costs $245, including 90 minutes of service. "If you have five people on a network and you're an Internet based service, if your system goes down, you want it fixed right now," Skelton says. "When it could cost them $5,000 not to be up, $245 is very reasonable. In a market this size, you have to have an extra truck. In Portland, you would need two or three extra trucks. "The goal when I leave is to make sure the computer is serving customers and not the other way around." Although he has ambitions to either franchise or enlarge beyond the Rogue Valley in the near future, Skelton says he doesn't want to grow to rapidly. He'd rather achieve incremental expansion. He says that how technicians deal with customers is just as important as their ability to fix computer problems. "The airline taught me a lot about that thing," Skelton says. "I was dealing with 400 or 500 people a day - a lot of celebrities and high-ranking CEOs. Even if you do everything flawlessly they'd be upset with things we had no control over. You have to learn to work things out without destroying the morale of employees and not alienating customers." 1HrPC is at 1075 Benson Way, Suite 7, Ashland. The phone number is 488-5141. Reach reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or e-mail [email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.