Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: LWC on September 10, 2007, 06:29:13 pm
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been to a house today and the windows were the worst i have seen, puty cement paint, pretty much anything you can think on there. inside and out, bad both sides
now i always give them a price for a job like this and always end up outta pocket. so i said i charge £15 a hour. which is less than i normally earn (i.e. £20) and said it would take around 4 hours
the lady was happy with that, and her husband rang and they had a small row over the phone and she said he thinks your very expensive
and i just said its going to be such a hard job...
im not expensive...am i???
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Not really.
I'd have asked a bit more actually.
You had every right to ask more like £25 p/h.
Ignore the next few posts telling you it should have been £2,000. ::)
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They will have to pay you or anyone a decent price to do such a rotten job !,
they cant be bothered to clean filth themselves, yet expect us to do it for nothing,
It still doesnt help us that the 3 quid brigade are still out there,
and if they are reading this, for goodness sakes get your prices up for the benefit of us all.!.
i put in a price today for £18 normal detached, ( high price for this area).... it was awkward , so hence the price....
no sooner had i got home , the phone rang... yes please !!! came the reply.
i have had one or two turn me down... but i say, if thats the price you want for doing it... stick with it mate.
Gary
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Set your price & stick to it. I think your cheap as i would have quoted alot more.
If her old man thinks it's too much let him do it, he will soon find how hard it is.
Macc
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LOL at Squeaky ;D
£3000.00!!! :P
No you are not expensive LWC. In fact that is really quite cheap. Arggg I hate to admit this but Squeaky has this one spot on in my opinion lol ;D
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Its proberly because you said you want £15.00 per hour and hes on about 9 ;D you should of just said your price £60.00 explained the reason of the work. that everywindow could take a good 5mins to clean or so.
Dave
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Thats a fair price to charge! It still a bit on the cheap side.
I would love to see her man do that job in 4 hours! It would be nowhere near the quality you would do!
Better off without that 1
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been to a house today and the windows were the worst i have seen, puty cement paint, pretty much anything you can think on there. inside and out, bad both sides
now i always give them a price for a job like this and always end up outta pocket. so i said i charge £15 a hour. which is less than i normally earn (i.e. £20) and said it would take around 4 hours
the lady was happy with that, and her husband rang and they had a small row over the phone and she said he thinks your very expensive
and i just said its going to be such a hard job...
im not expensive...am i???
I would not class that as expensive, I cleaned a house and charged £100 flat took me 4 hours and the house was a right state had to razor every window inside and out (should have charged more) we charge a bit more than you. I always say the price upfront so we all know where we stand, I got a nasty text and a few threats so went back to the house as i dont like people doing that to me, the treats stopped straight away, i didnt get the customer for a reg clean, you normally find this happens when the missus calls and books it as the other half keeps saying they will do it and they dont, they get the ass on when they findout the cost as they think £20 is more than enough for 4 hours work.
You will find the richer they are the tighter they are ;)
My advice would be to put your price up and dont worry about people like them
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if it's a 4 hour job you should be charging a min of £120 if not more
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Be careful on this one LWC.
The hubby will be looking for any excuse to knock a few £ off once you've finished.
£15ph for what sounds like a builders clean is way too cheap.
Personally I'd swerve it!
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Not really.
I'd have asked a bit more actually.
You had every right to ask more like £25 p/h.
Ignore the next few posts telling you it should have been £2,000. ::)
if anyone can get this type of money please let me know as i really need to know how to do this ;D
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Just re-read this and you haven't already done the job I think.
Good advice from Simon Knight I think. Don't bother with it. £15.00 per hour I have to say is very cheap really and like he says you will probably get hassle anyway.
Leave it well alone.. you wont even get a regular clean out of this one.
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am i expensive? no
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Years ago I tried to branch out into gardening and delivered a load of leaflets. One of those leaflets resulted in a call from a bloke who had inherited a house and wanted to put it up for sale.
The garden was totally overgrown and he wanted it cleared. I said it was too big a job for me to do. Even so he pushed me for a price "well" I said "by the time you hire a skip and everything its going to be well over £1,000"
"A thousand pounds" he said "I thought it would be about £150 tops"
There you have the problem. People often have no idea whats involved.
Anyway, I never did the job and I never took to the gardening. I badly underquoted a couple of jobs and got the hump with it all.
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lwc
that is cheap (£15) i would say ad least £20 hour and add a bit on just incase it does take little longer.
if they dont like it tell them to get a cowboy for £3 hour ;)
if they dont like the price now they prob be hastle on the next cleans
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LWC, if your gut feeling is that they will be hassle customers then decline the work, as it will only "haunt" you and wind you up, I can just hear it now...."oh there is still cement on the window"...and you find a pin head amount that you would need a microscope for. I think that this is a lesson for all who want to charge by the hour. Price every job on its own merits, not by an hourly rate. If you are asked how long it will take make sure that you say the word approximately.
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i have been cleaning now for 4 years
i charge what i want like, i wont miss this job. the lady was really nice. i will do it, but i know that im not expensive. i wanted to see what you guys think
i knew £15 was cheap a hour, but its not that harder a job as for access
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I`m glad i didn`t quote that job,what Grafters is quoting would be more closer to the mark.Was your price per window?LOL.If the job was going to take you say 5-6 times as long to do than normal then there`s your quote based on what you would charge for that house as a regular clean,so regular clean £20 x 6 times as long = £120.
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Matt
If you need the Job, Name your price & stick to it, but they sound like the witch I binned the other week, not worth the hastle, wide berth springs to mind ;)
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On the first time you meet these kind of customers you can just tell what the outcome will be in the end,she`s giving you greive on the price and you aint even cleaned a window yet.
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On the first time you meet these kind of customers you can just tell what the outcome will be in the end,she`s giving you greive on the price and you aint even cleaned a window yet.
That is so true, you can usually tell within the first few minutes of meeting them, what type of customer they will be.
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If you normally work 8 hours a day, you have to charge more than half what you would earn in that day. four hours continual graft is a lot of work. Your not travelling between jobs are you?
I would have gone for the £20 an hour, but there again, I don't need the work. Dai
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Price per job,price per hour and you`ll lose out especially on these types of jobs.I keep saying it,you can clean loads and loads of window`s in an hour.
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matt she`ll be saying you scratched all the windows next then you wont get sod all
like what happened to us the other week take this from me 24 years cleaning DONT do it
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You are to cheap i would have wanted at least £20 per hour but on large jobs i always tend to quote about £30 an hour as they often take longer than you think especially if they have not been done for a while.
Paul
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I would phone the customer up and tell them you are very sorry but you have taken advice off fellow window cleaners and your previous was incorrect the price now will be 20 pound per hour ;D
charge whatever you like mate, if he thinks its that easy tell him to do it himself
regards
Brett
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Too cheap. NEVER quote the customer on a per window or per hour basis. The only times I made those mistakes (early on) it blew up in my face. I even had one custie going around before my clean selecting which windows she wanted me to do (the difficult ones of course).
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you're not too expensive no, i would never dream of quoting an hourly price though. this is what realy upsets some people, " 25 QUID AN HOUR :o, HE'S ONLY A F**KING WINDOW CLEANER >:( >:(
Unless they are self-employed themselves, the chances are most of your customers are on half that & many less.
I know it's not rocket science for them to work out your hourly rate if they want to but generaly, giving them a price for the job or an hourly rate will have two very different responses. ;)
tony
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Mac we agree so much these days it`s like we are long lost twin brothers. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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Mac we agree so much these days it`s like we are long lost twin brothers. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
could be the calm before the storm ;D
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well i hve never charged by the hour before and the lady asked me what i charge per hour, and as i was walking around i thought id give an hourly rate a go just to see how it goes
ah well, ill keep you posted lol ;D
my question has been answered, im not expensive and actually quite cheap so he can shaaaat up
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no your not expensive !
i charge more than you and im not expensive !
for the reasons that you and the others have given i dont do builders cleans etc anymore ,
however monday i did a builders clean ( first in many years ) family friend of a customer , possibility of a regular job , did a good job , last night they phoned and moaned ( not complained ) just generally about price and clean !
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Never quote an hourly rate.
Just tot up how long you think the job will take (it often takes longer!) multiply by the rate you want and then just tell the customer the price for the job
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been to a house today and the windows were the worst i have seen, puty cement paint, pretty much anything you can think on there. inside and out, bad both sides
now i always give them a price for a job like this and always end up outta pocket. so i said i charge £15 a hour. which is less than i normally earn (i.e. £20) and said it would take around 4 hours
the lady was happy with that, and her husband rang and they had a small row over the phone and she said he thinks your very expensive
and i just said its going to be such a hard job...
im not expensive...am i???
When it comes to window cleaning, it can be tough-physically demanding work.
I've worked for Royal Mail at £5.50 per hour sorting mail bags and done security work for £7.00 per hour.
But I like to earn far more per hour cleaning windows, and that would be more than £15 an hour.
Why?
Because far more effort - and a certain amount of planning - is spent cleaning windows, especially minging dirty ones, than what is spent humping mail bags or sitting on your arse on a building site looking out for Chavs trying to vandalise stuff.
Then you've got to take into consideration holiday pay, sick pay, and Alistair Darling's cut (I think he's the new tax man).
Then what about those periods you can't work due to the weather?
My advice would be to never ever tell a customer an hourly charge; give them a quote for the job and charge high for a 'high calorie job'.
If you tell them your hourly rate; they probably will compare it to their own; and they won't be happy with the comparison, probably, but they won't understand the difference between being employed and self-employed; or the restrictions on our earnings.