About Techbud.Net

Techbud.Net exists because finding someone honest to fix a computer is harder than it should be, and because the people who need that most are the least well served by how the industry currently works.

The problem

If your computer stops working, your options are roughly: a big-box store counter that will keep it for a week, a national chain that reads from a script, a phone number from a search result that may well be a scam, or asking around and hoping. None of those are good.

Meanwhile there are genuinely excellent independent technicians in every town: one-person operations, retired engineers, the person the whole street already calls. They are hard to find, they are bad at marketing, and they have no way of proving to a stranger that they are trustworthy.

What we do about it

We find those people, we meet them, we background check them, and we put them somewhere you can find them. Then we handle the money, so that the most uncomfortable part of the whole transaction is taken care of before anyone knocks on your door.

We are a referral service. The pros are independent businesses, not our employees. What we sell is the checking, the introduction, and the protection around the payment.

Why there is a crown on the logo

Because on this site the customer is the one in charge. You agree to the price before anything happens, you hold the money until you are satisfied, and you say when the technician gets paid.

That is not decoration, it is the actual product. If we ever build something that takes that control away from you, we have got it wrong.

Who we serve

We cover the Coachella Valley: Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Indio, Desert Hot Springs, Coachella, and Bermuda Dunes. We would rather cover one valley properly than claim to cover the country and know nobody in it.

A lot of our customers are older, and a lot of them have been made to feel stupid by someone in this industry before. That is worth saying out loud, because it shapes everything: the size of the text on this site, the words we use, the rule that our pros have to explain what they are doing, and the rule that talking down to someone gets a technician removed.

How we make money

Three ways, and we would rather you knew all of them.

• 15% of a completed job (or $15, whichever is the larger). This comes out of the technician’s side, not added to your price. It covers card processing, holding the money until you sign off, the yearly background checks, and a person here to sort it out when a job goes wrong.
• A one-time $45 from a technician when we accept them. It pays for their first background check, at what the check costs us. We do not make anything on it, and it buys nobody a place on this site: plenty of people pay nothing because we turn them down first.
• Promoted listings. Pros and shops can pay to appear higher up the results. Those listings are always labeled “Promoted”, and paying does not get anyone past the background check or the standards.

We do not sell your details, we do not run ads, and we do not take a commission from anyone we have not met.

Get in touch

Questions, complaints, or you know a technician we should be talking to: hello@techbud.net. A person reads it.