Millennials to Eden: ‘Can you help my mom use her smartphone?’

For many young people, a trip home to visit Mom and Dad often comes with requests for help with this or that electronic device.

[...] instead of helping dad sort family photos or mom install a new app, Bay Area Millennials have a variety of options, including a new service, Eden, to dispatch tech support to the homestead instead.

Eden, a San Francisco company that began service last month, hopes to disrupt the Geek Squad — or at least replace the geeks with wizards.

The startup dispatches an on-demand independent contractor — a “tech wizard” — to homes and small businesses within a couple of hours, or at a specific time.

Geek Squad began in 1994, and now the service, owned by Best Buy, sends techies to any home in the country to repair devices for rates starting at $150.

Eden’s service, for computers, home entertainment and other devices, costs $69 an hour and is currently available only in the Bay Area.

[...] Eden — which is participating in Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley startup accelerator — has more than 20 on-demand workers, who are paid at least $30 an hour, said Joe Du Bey, a co-founder and the company’s chief executive officer.

While Millennials are apt to call on Eden for a broken screen, the majority of the startup’s in-home clients have been over 40, Du Bey said.

[...] many times, such appointments have been made by Millennials for their parents.

“I do Toastmasters (club), and I talk to everyone,” she explained.

Abby, a 64-year-old retired psychologist, had been having trouble with her computer, but didn’t want to ask her son, who lives in the Bay Area, or keep pestering her husband David, 66, who she said is more technologically inclined, for help.

[...] she explained the problem to Cix Liv, the Eden worker who showed up at her apartment on Thursday afternoon.

“My computer is really slow,” she said — especially on start up, and she had a hunch it had to do with too many programs and all the photos she had, but she didn’t know what to do with them.

“This is so needed,” Abby said of the on-demand help, asking when Eden was moving to Florida.