Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: roundbuilder on October 05, 2010, 11:45:18 am
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Right i understand that down south more can be charged for indow cleaning. what i cant understand is that when i first started window cleaning in 2002 i had a round where all my prices were £8 which were for small semi's and terraced houses, i then started to come on forums to find recomended min charge was £10 so i put them all up to £10 (i lost about 5 if i can remember) but that was in 2002 8 years ago.now my min i charge for a house is £12 so not much difference in 8 years. However recently been noticing on here that SOME people up north are doing semi's for £4-£6 id dread to think what they charge for terraced. Surely something isnt right how can it be double down her. there isnt that much difference in cost of living between the 2 or is there??.
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We care about our appearance down here.
Never been down a coal-mine me and I dont think many of my custards have ;)
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It's all relevant to what part of the UK you live in. Property prices vary, wages vary etc etc.
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there isnt that much difference in cost of living between the 2 or is there??.
I'd say yes there's a big difference. Cost of living in some southern areas and more desirable other UK area's can increase quite a lot compared to up't north in small old fashoined mining town sort of areas. (where I am)
I think house prices mainly are the biggest difference in cost of living. A house that would be maybe £80k could be more like £180k in a more desirable or popular/heavily populated southern area.
Even though I live in an old fashoined mining town myself I still try and price a decent/respectable amount for my local work.
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Surely there are affluent areas up north; I can't imagine many premier league footballers live in run down mining villages ???
Anyway, it's not a north / south divide; I reckon it's a London and surrounding area / rest of the country divide because down in Plymouth we can't charge London prices, and apparently Cornwall is even worse :'(
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Surely there are affluent areas up north; I can't imagine many premier league footballers live in run down mining villages ???
Anyway, it's not a north / south divide; I reckon it's a London and surrounding area / rest of the country divide because down in Plymouth we can't charge London prices, and apparently Cornwall is even worse :'(
They all live in Cheshire don'cha know? That's as far South as you can get without becoming a Brummie loike! ;D
You are right about Posh'n'poor areas - here in Bristol, which outside of the South East is pretty affluent even now privately bought council semi's needing work (real brick jobbies, not the concrete cancer type) fetch £150K/£170K and a if you are in Stoke Bishop that would be £250K plus - Sneyd Park, Clifton or Leigh Woods gets you into the 500K/1 million range, before you go out into the country and buy a small manor house.
But one of my custies lives in a village outside Bristol near the M48 Severn Bridge and they sold a semi in London for 650K and got this 5 bed bungalow with a 5 car garage and 4 acres of land for the same money!
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parts of cornwall are crap, i have some which are crap and some good ones,
there is a lot of cheap wc down here working on the side, and then u get the summer brigade, come down to surf and all become wc
i think a lot of what people will accept as a decent price, has got to be reasonable price for the job, sure we all have some which are priced high and all moan when get undercut, i do a few terrace house for a £5 each, not great price but got 4 next to each other so earn £20 for 30 mins work tops
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parts of cornwall are crap, i have some which are crap and some good ones,
there is a lot of cheap wc down here working on the side, and then u get the summer brigade, come down to surf and all become wc
i think a lot of what people will accept as a decent price, has got to be reasonable price for the job, sure we all have some which are priced high and all moan when get undercut, i do a few terrace house for a £5 each, not great price but got 4 next to each other so earn £20 for 30 mins work tops
all good but if they were priced at £10........
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u wouldnt get them at £10 cleeen,
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And even if you did someone would pinch them off you for £7.50 :o
It's all well and good folk coming on here spouting minimum prices and saying they wouldn't get out of bed for less than this or that but I honestly believe that that's mostly sh*"e.
Of course you wouldn't clean a house for £2 but I think some of the minimumprices on here are better left in their imaginations ::)
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Right i understand that down south more can be charged for indow cleaning. what i cant understand is that when i first started window cleaning in 2002 i had a round where all my prices were £8 which were for small semi's and terraced houses, i then started to come on forums to find recomended min charge was £10 so i put them all up to £10 (i lost about 5 if i can remember) but that was in 2002 8 years ago.now my min i charge for a house is £12 so not much difference in 8 years. However recently been noticing on here that SOME people up north are doing semi's for £4-£6 id dread to think what they charge for terraced. Surely something isnt right how can it be double down her. there isnt that much difference in cost of living between the 2 or is there??.
It's not just about cost of living differences - though they can be quite marked when you compare rents and mortgage sizes in particular. It is also about the drag effect of the black economy on pricing. Traditionally unemployment has been much higher in the north so you will get a bigger black economy - of which part-time window cleaning forms a fair part. Add the supply and demand figures being skewed by the additional black economy labour onto the difference in cost of living and you then start you see a much larger variation in pricing.
I know it's wrong but it's the way society is I'm afraid.
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And even if you did someone would pinch them off you for £7.50 :o
It's all well and good folk coming on here spouting minimum prices and saying they wouldn't get out of bed for less than this or that but I honestly believe that that's mostly sh*"e.
Of course you wouldn't clean a house for £2 but I think some of the minimumprices on here are better left in their imaginations ::)
I'm in the southeast and have a minimum for new work of £10. However it's very unusual for me to quote below £12 these days. I do have older work (very small jobs) that I charge for which less.
However, if my mortgage was say £300 less per month (due to lower house prices) and I could save a bit on my shopping bill (unlikely as I'm already a right Timothy), and the local economy was also generally at a more price deflated level, then of course I could work for less. I might even be able to work for less and still have a slightly better standard of living. It's not about how much disposable income there is but how much it would buy locally.
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Cheshire is a goldmine ;D
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my brother lives in wimbledon and the cost of living is a lot higher than the north west.he also earns about 10grand more than me a year.is he better off?NO!as the extra money he earns is swallowed up by high rent and higher living costs.
i couldnt care less about prices around the country.at the end of the day its up to YOU what you want to charge!
if you want to charge £10 min or clean the same property for a quid then its entirely up to you!! :P :P :P :P
dazmond
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im in suffolk and for a while thought i was underpriced as my average for a semi or a council house was 8 or 9 / the big trad firm near me is about 10-12 .but then on this forum a fellah was selling a round here the prices were 3 or 4 quid for detached. that cheered me up !
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We care about our appearance down here.
But usually get it wrong ;)
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:-*
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;D
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southerner in exile up north and i still charge southern prices whatever that may be :-\,I think its supply and demand if there is demand for your services then you can charge more.
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This has came up many times in the past and if you look into it more closely you will usually find that the people cleaning the lower priced semi is doing far more per hour, balancing out roughly to the same amount of money per hour.
Now taking into consideration the cost of living differences many of the WC cleaning a 3 bed semi for £6 is actually better off than the person cleaning a 3 bed semi for £15.
Peter Fogwill
www.window-tools.com
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if your work is very compact(like a lot of mine)you can still earn good money on £6/£7/£8 houses especially if you ve got 150 of em practically all right next door to each other.done wfp plus i get the conny roofs/fascia cleans annually off these custies plus the xmas tips!
its a myth that some of us who charge less with compact work dont do ok!
VIRTUALLY NO DRIVING BETWEEN JOBS!
EASY TO COLLECT!
KEEPS THE COMPETITION AT BAY WITH LOWER PRICES!
its really not worth other windys to clean the odd one or two sandwiched in between my avalanche of work at the prices i charge on these estates!
its called good business sense in these tough times! ;) ;D ;D
dazmond
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6 houses an hour at £6=£36
6 houses an hour at £15=£60
??? how can the guy doing £6 pound a house do more an hour to match a guy charging £15 a house, he would have to somehow dpo 12 an hour which is near impossible to keep up all day unless you have a round of 1000 houses all next to eachother??
anyway my point to this thread was that in 2002 people down south were charging more than the guys up north charge now. surely you guys put prices up 50p-£1 every few year?? i put mine up every 2 years 50p.
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Its whatever price you wanna charge and whatever price people are willing to pay. North south east west doesnt matter... Some dont realise that getting work is a negotiating business aswell. I want to get as much money as i can cos i know my service is 1 of the best but i will never ever turn a job down.
i would do a terraced for a quid because i will always see the bigger picture for that job i charge a quid for (slight over exageration but just an example).
A good moto to live by is in anything u consider to be bad or negative...like a job for a quid...there is always a seed of equivalent benefit and that goes for anything in life youll be amazed what good can come from bad.
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Its whatever price you wanna charge and whatever price people are willing to pay. North south east west doesnt matter... Some dont realise that getting work is a negotiating business aswell. I want to get as much money as i can cos i know my service is 1 of the best but i will never ever turn a job down.
i would do a terraced for a quid because i will always see the bigger picture for that job i charge a quid for (slight over exageration but just an example).
A good moto to live by is in anything u consider to be bad or negative...like a job for a quid...there is always a seed of equivalent benefit and that goes for anything in life youll be amazed what good can come from bad.
If that's you in the picture, then I totally agree with what you say whether it's right or not :-X ;)
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If that's you in the picture, then I totally agree with what you say whether it's right or not :-X ;)
LOL :D
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If that's you in the picture, then I totally agree with what you say whether it's right or not :-X ;)
And if that is you in your picture rg1, then I agree with you whatever you say! ;D
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cleeen simply put you just wouldnt get 15quid for a small 3 bedder where i work!im putting my prices up every year on my old compact work but theres still older windys charging £4-£5 for the same houses!there is a lot of competition! ::)
i seen a poster up today of a window cleaning company offering first clean FREE!! ::) ::).MADNESS!if you ask me!i would never do a first clean for FREE!and these guys have been going years!i dont understand it as theyll get custys who ll cancel after the first clean! ::) ::)
its not the way i do business anyway!! ;D ;D
regards
dazmond
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Ok guys some of my customers apy me £12.00 for the last 3years I have gave them a reduction of £2.00 and this is for always paying on time every time without having to chase them for the money. As I think its good business to give a little back from time to time just to say thank you a bit of respect.