If something isn’t working properly — or is just frustrating you — I’m here to help.

You’ve got a thing that doesn’t work.

Either you’ve had a go at it yourself and watched all the videos, and none of them quite cover your situation. Or you’ve got a busy life and you haven’t got the time or the bandwidth to work it out — but you don’t want to overpay for something that turns out to be unnecessary.

You’ve been on hold. The person who came out last time replaced something expensive and it’s still doing it.

Most people who fix things fix one kind of thing. The appliance person doesn’t do networks. The computer person doesn’t do door locks. And nobody wants the job that’s “I don’t actually know what’s wrong.”

That’s the job I want. Working out what’s actually happening is the part I’m good at — and it’s the part nobody else wants.

Everyone has a short list. The latch that sticks. The app that does the annoying thing. The noise. You stopped noticing you were annoyed by it a while ago — you just work around it now.

Those are my favorite jobs. I’ve worked with:

• The college kid in a first apartment who has never had to think about a heating system
• The 85-year-old whose phone has been beeping all day and will not say why
• The single mother whose door latch keeps sticking
• The professional whose car keyfob started acting weird, who does not have a morning to spend at the dealership

Different people, same sentence: it’s not worth calling anyone about.
It is now. The first call is free.

Most of what people hate about an app is a setting nobody has ever changed.

And if the answer is that the thing doesn’t exist

• A digital tool or small app for your computer, tablet or phone — built for the way you actually work
• A 3D-printed part — when the bracket, clip or knob is discontinued, overpriced, or was never made in the first place

Both get quoted and talked through before anything starts. Neither is a surprise on a bill.

Here’s the thing: most of what goes wrong in your house doesn’t need a master. It needs someone who can work out which of the fifteen possible causes it actually is.

Masters are expensive, and you only need one some of the time. Start with a jack. If it turns out you do need an expert, you’ll know that before you’ve paid one to come and tell you.

You can. And for plenty of things you should — I’ll tell you when that’s the right answer.

Here’s the problem. It isn’t what they can answer. They’ll answer anything, and they’ll do almost anything you can do on a computer. The problem is that they can be confidently wrong.

They’ll write and send an email for you that says something offensive or simply untrue — and the person receiving it thinks that was you. They’ll tell you two medications don’t interact, with total confidence, and be wrong. They do the thing you asked, in a way you never wanted, and they never sound uncertain about it.

And there’s a second thing: they only know what they were trained on or what they can find on the internet. 25 years of me taking things apart and working out why they broke was never in anyone’s training data.

Yes, and carefully. It helps me research faster — read the manual, find the error code, check what changed in the update that broke your thing.

It never answers you. I do.

When something needs real digging, I send out several assistants at once, each searching differently. They don’t come back with an answer — they come back with their working: what they searched, how, what they actually found, and the reasoning that got them to a conclusion. I read those side by side. Where they disagree, that’s the interesting part, and it’s mine to resolve.

They follow rules I wrote: show where every claim came from, never summarise when the original can be read, and never act on your behalf without my say-so. When one of them gets something wrong, it gets written down — I corrected mine three times this week.

That isn’t a promise of perfection. It’s a habit of checking, and it’s why you get an answer I’ve stood behind rather than one a machine guessed at.

Some things I won’t talk you through, however simple they sound: anything electrical past resetting a breaker · anything to do with gas · anything holding weight, pressure, or a car up · anything up a ladder · anything needing a permit. And on the computer side: turning off your security, switching off two-step login, letting a stranger into your machine, or resetting anything before your photos are safely backed up.

The test I use is simple: if the fix went wrong, could someone get hurt — a person, an animal, your home, or your data? If yes, I don’t walk you through it. I tell you exactly what’s wrong, who you need, what it should cost, and what to ask them.

That’s not me being unhelpful. It’s the reason this is safe to use.

What I do is tell you exactly what’s wrong, what it’ll take, and whether you need a professional at all.

If you do, I’ll find you one properly: I’ll research the people in your area, read what the reviews and forums actually say, and give you a shortlist with the sources so you can check my work. Plus what to say when you call, what to ask, what a fair price looks like, and which “this needs replacing” claims to push back on.

Finding out what’s wrong is always the same price. What it costs to fix is something I tell you before you spend anything else.

Your first fifteen minutes are free — that is for new customers, so you can find out whether I can help before you spend anything at all.

After that it is a dollar a minute, which is sixty dollars an hour, with a fifteen-minute minimum on a session. So the smallest a session can cost is fifteen dollars. Compare that with what it costs to get anyone to your door: around here, tradesmen charge $109–159 just to show up, before they have looked at anything.

A session is not limited to one thing. Bring the printer, the thermostat and the thing your phone started doing last Tuesday. We can go through as many topics as you want — it is your time. Most people have a list and have been waiting for somewhere to put it.

No call-out fee, because I am not driving anywhere. No diagnostic fee, because the diagnosis is the thing you are buying.

A session can be a text conversation, a phone call, or a video call — on your phone, tablet or computer. Whichever suits you.

If there’s someone around who’s comfortable with the phone or computer — a family member, a neighbor, a grandchild — having them sit with you often halves the time, and halves what you pay. Not required. It just tends to be cheaper.

1. Tell me what’s giving you trouble — call, text, email, or the form. However you like. “I don’t know what’s wrong with it” is a complete answer.
2. I tell you what I think it is and roughly what it’ll take, before you commit to anything.
3. I fix it — remotely if I can reach it, or I talk you through fixing it yourself.
4. You pay — card or PayPal online, or a check in the post. Whichever suits you.

I’m not a franchise, and you won’t get a different person next time.

I’ve spent 25 years building and fixing things across trades that don’t usually overlap — manufacturing, computers, electronics, small business systems. That’s why the problem that falls between two specialists tends to end up with me.

Most of my work comes from people passing my name on. That’s on purpose.

This opens your email app with the details filled in. If that doesn’t work on your device, please just call or text — that is always the fastest way to reach me.