I don't want to turn this into a dick measuring competition, but how many threads have been over the last few months quizzing either frequency or prices?
What used to be a straight forward profession of non-contractual trust based on non-corporate prices seems to have evolved into a factional quest for the ultimate hourly rate. I blame this on two factors - the old man with his wooden ladder choosing customers based on the quality of their tea not pushing the profession, and the aspirational businessman throwing money at what is still boring, unskilled labour.
At some point over the last ten years window cleaners seem to have gained an inferiority complex, matched only by the economic boom and the advent of WFP, that suggests a certain level of income is beneath us despite window cleaning being, in my opinion, low down on the tradesmans hierachical structure. To simply charge people as much as what they can get away with is a trade built on sandy ground.
Inflation needs to be taken into account obviously, as does the desire to aspire beyond the perceptions of what a window cleaner is. I just think the industry has gone too far, too fast without actually slipping the bonds of the afore mentioned public perception and without doing anything different than what window cleaners did with chamois leathers fifty years ago.
Window cleaning will get so expensive or frivilous for customers people will choose a different method of having their windows cleaned and choose large, cheap national companies who will plummet the prices and destroy the industry as it stands. It was a high percentage of customers that based their choice of window cleaner on trust and faith rather than money but with the price of having windows cleaned matching many of the customers direct debits this will swing in the other direction.
For the record, and please don't be lazy with this, I am based in South Yorkshire and I clean using WFP. My brother, who is also a window cleaner, had three pounds thrown on the floor in spite after a twenty minute confrontation with a customer who insisted he had been trying to con her - all this at night after a hard day working.
The trade is still simple and delicate, with unorthodox practices unseen in other professions. We need all the solidarity we can get.
