Have geeks, will travel
What every home office needs: techies on call

June 14, 2004
By Len Strazewski

Dialing 911: Joan McCullough's new wireless network gear didn't work with her laptop or the Internet service in her home office. She was stuck – until she found a tech support service that made house calls. Photo: Brett Kramer

It was an embarrassing problem for Joan McCullough, a marketing executive for a large computer and technology company who works from her west suburban home.

The wireless network her company paid to install at her home office didn't work with her laptop computer or her cable-based Internet service. Calls to the vendor tech support line were fruitless.

"I really was very frustrated," she recalls. "I reached the limit of what I could do on the telephone with the vendor and wasn't making any progress."

What she needed was something most workers in a traditional office setting take for granted: a tech support person who would come to look at, poke around and possibly even replace her equipment.

A handful of entrepreneurs have recognized that need and are starting to fill it. In Ms. McCullough's case, her savior was a representative of Virginia-based franchise operator Geeks on Call America Inc., which fielded Ms. McCullough's call at a national phone bank and passed it to James Fu, who operates the company's first Chicago-area franchise out of West Dundee.

One of Mr. Fu's technicians arrived later that day.

"It wasn't easy," Ms. McCullough recalls. "Basically, he had to reinstall everything, negotiate with the cable company and install some new software. He even had to shop for a new monitor for me to complete the setup. But he got it working." The tab: About $900 for roughly eight hours of work.

"It has become very difficult to get service where you need it — on-site, where the problem is," says Mr. Fu, who operates 10 Geeks on Call franchises in the west and northwest suburbs. "Most users simply cannot afford to be without their computers for the time it takes for factory service."