Clean It Up
UK Floor Cleaning Forum => Carpet Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: Les on September 16, 2008, 05:21:49 pm
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Hi all,
I thought I'd just share my frustration with you.... :o
I've just had a job cancelled that I only got yesterday, it was for a large bathroom, landing, bedroom, stairs and restaurant carpet in a pub about 20 miles away.
The landlord said that since I'd quoted, he'd discovered,(miraculously) that one of his pub regulars cleans carpets, ::) and would do the work for.......£60 ! :o :o
I was a bit gobsmacked, but not totally surprised in the current climate, however I did feel it fit to ask if the Landlord tried to compete on price in his restaraunt with the burger van in his car park on a friday night :P The answer was of course "No" which is exactly why I won't be doing the job.
On a more positive note, he does want me to valet his car......obviously no Valeters amongst the regulars ;)
I also lost a job for an estate agent two weeks ago when another 'Professional' ::) carpet cleaner agreed to clean all the house carpets for £90.
Fotunately we don't just clean carpets and we're booked up to October on most things. We'll keep pushing the quality and service and leave the distress pricing to others.
aaagghhh, I feel so much better now that's off my mind ;)
Les
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Stick to your guns ........... some won't or simply cannot.
Recently had returning customer......... he thought the grass was greener on the 'cheap clean' side of the hill ....... 3 months on and carpets are trashed but were lasting 9 months whilst i was cleaning with microsplitters ;D
He had found TM user who could clean in half the time for half the price .............. not so good when it needs doing THREE times as often though :P
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I agree, stick to your guns, I am just about to start a little marketing experiment with TM v porty
stats 10x more dirt removal etc, just to see if Joe public takes any notice.
S
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spencer
your marketing experiment reminded me of this joke
Paddy took his chainsaw back into B&Q and says to the bloke in dungarees "You told me i could cut down one hundred trees wit this chainsaw.but I could only manage 50 with it " So the bloke gets the chainsaw and pulls the start up cord and it goes 'brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr','brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and Paddy says "What's the chuffs' that noise?"!!!!!
spencer its the same with truckmounts and porty they havent got a clue
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Would be good to find out how the guy gets on with the pub clean :D
Am sure that they will be in a bad state too mate.
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I get many a job from other cleaners who have portis it's like heaven having a TM, all of that added suction drawing out of that extra soiling left behing by inferior cleaning machinery, would catch me going only half the way!
Shaun
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Here we go, another arguement of who has the best system.
At the end of the day it's not always what system is used but how it's used.
Like Chris I can get non resoiling results from pads, or I can get get great results with a portable, whilst some who have parted with £20k plus make a right mess but look great wehen they turn up in their 58 reg sprinter complete with self contained super charged truck mount.
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Ah, perhaps I need to educate them ;)
S
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We do have Speedsters too, not knocking them or any other quality portable, but I only use them when I have to.
S
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Neil you are spot on but I didn't light the blue touch paper!
The fact is a TM is designed to flush quicker then a porti but it depends on who's at the end of the stick! I could no way handle the amount of work I do with a porti and be home for supper.
Shaun
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Shaun
the argument about porty,s and truckmount shouldn,t be about which cleans best but which enables you to earn the maximum amount of money the easiest.
which would be a truckmount .
but for the majority of cleaners the cost v s there income stops them from buying them .
we are the only ones that notice any difference and even that is difficult to tell to the naked eye .
we all do the best we can on the budget that we have .
Neil
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Thanks for the comments,
I will stick to my guns on Quality v's Price as 'Price Driven' business is only good for as long as it takes for some other idiot :o to undercut you.
I'm not sure that I mentioned the benefits of TM's against Portables, whch is where the conversation seems to have drifted, maybe that's another post for someone else ..... ;)
I just look at the many letters of praise that I've had (and kept) ::) from my customers to realise that generally I'm doing ok. ;D
On a positive twist to the credit crunch, (have you all heard about that )? :o I have been successful in turning customers off the idea of purchasing new Carpets, 3 Pce Suites etc. and instead saving money by having them cleaned. 1. They can always buy in the future when things pick up,(somewhere about 2050 at the current rate) and 2. It gives them a welcome lift to see that lovely clean carpet, upholstery or whatever else it is that we've done for them.
I cleaned the carpets below at one of those Childrens Play Centres recently. Of course, the owner had forgot I was going and had a kiddies party on when I arrived at 6m ::) :P
Still, I got on with the job and as I started the cleaning I got all the parents coming over to 'watch those stains just Dissapear'!, (sorry been watching too many Sky shopping channels) , it actually turned out to be quite fruitful with lots of cards being handed out hence more potential customers ;)
All we need now is some more sunshine and I'll be really appy again.
Les
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Hi Guys
It is always a wind up when a customer cancels.
I had a call Friday 6.40 pm, now I don't usually answer the phone that late, especially on a Friday but I did.
Booked in two sofas, then call on Sunday, didnt answer, left message cancelling >:(
She rang again Tuseday to check if I had got her message and as she had wound me up, more with the call times than anything else I thought I would give her some back.
'Yes I did get the message, as a matter of interest why did you cancel"
'I got a very reasonable quote from someone else'
'I suppose you mean cheap'
'Yes'
T'hat is very risky cheap price means cheap job etc'
'Oh no he had a 100 % price back guarantee'
' Thats not much good if he ruins the suite'
I could sense her cogs whirring so politely finished the conversation leaving her with food for thought ;D
Cheers
Doug
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Nice one Doug !
Les
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Les
That's an impressive result on the childrens play centre carpets. What chemicals and system did you use to do achieve that?
Fraser
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yep good results, but that magazine looks a bit racey for a children play centre :D
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had a cancellation for tommorow
just means i get home early ;D ;D
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If a customer cancels its there loss not mine, personally I couldn't give a fig, and yes I do have a truckmount, and if a customer cancels its usually the cheap end of the market who we do not really cater for any way, so sod them, there I feel a whole lot better for that Ted ;D
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This story has been copied and pasted on here before , and I make no apologies for doing it again.
The Hot Dog Man, and the Recession
Once upon a time, there was a good man, who had worked hard all his life. He disliked his work. It was not rewarding. His boss was never happy. But he worked hard. Until, one day, this man decided he had had enough, and he quit.
He just walked out. He went home and told his wife. She cried.
How are we going to send our boy to college”, she asked? The man thought for a minute and then said, “I will think of something”. After a while, he decided to do something he has always wanted to do. He would sell hot dogs on the street corner from a little hot dog cart on wheels.
He took his savings and bought a hot dog cart. His friends were not too sure about this. But the hot dog man started selling hot dogs on the street corner, in his hometown. They were good hot dogs. Best quality. Not cheap, but he charged enough to pay for them. Things went pretty well right from the beginning
People liked his hot dogs. He always made sure to have plenty of fresh ketchup and mustard and onions. Every customer got a smile with their hot dog.
He did very well, and soon more people wanted his hot dogs. More than he could serve. So he bought another hot dog cart. His son pushed the new cart. He made good hot dogs too.
And every one of the Son's customers got a smile and a thank you to go with their hot dog. The hot dog man made sure to teach his son about this. The two did well, and saved the money they made, until it was time for the boy to go to college. There was enough money to send him to school even if the hot dog man paid another young man to push the second cart.
“Give them a smile with every hot dog,” he told his first employee. It worked fine.
This gave him an idea. He bought a third cart and hired a second employee.
Every year the city grew and every year he added a few more carts. The hot dog man’s company did very well. Buns and dogs were coming in bigger trucks these days. He was glad the son decided to study business in college. Their hot dog company was hiring more and more people and getting bigger and bigger. It would be great when the son returned home with all that college education to help him manage it.
The big day finally arrived. The son came home from college. Dad was excited. Mom too. There was a BIG Party. Everybody came.
Then it was time to get to work. But the son was not interested in working in the hot dog company. He wanted to do something more grand. The hot dog man was sad.
But then he asked, “Can you just look over our books and give me some advice?”
“Sure”, said the son, while looking at his watch.
“Things are going pretty good”, said the hot dog man. He got the books and paperwork out to proudly show the son what they had become while he was gone.
The son looked things over and thought for a minute. Then he said, “Gee, Dad, you have an awful lot of hot dog carts. And Expenses.”
Then he asked, “Don’t you know a Recession is coming?”. The hot dog man did not know what a Recession was, so he asked.
The son explained what he had learned in college about Recessions. The hot dog man shook his head in amazement.
He thought things were OK, but his son was just out of college. The hot dog man had worked a lot of hours to pay for that college education. He thought surely the college people knew more about business than he did, so he listened.
The son said, maybe you should mothball a few carts this season…
So that is what the hot dog man did. After a month or so, sales were down.
The son and the hot dog man looked things over again. The son said they should cut advertising expenses a little.
The hot dog man was sure the son must know about these things, So that is what they did. Sure enough, sales went down.
A few months later the books were worse. The Son said profits were being squeezed by the Recession. He said they should buy a cheaper hot dog. Save a little money. So they did. Sure enough, Sales went down.
After a while the son looked again at the books. Again. He said, “Gee Dad, you’re not making much money. Maybe you should cut payroll a little. So they laid off a few employees. The ones who stayed on were not too sure what would happen next. They stopped giving a smile with every hot dog. And sales went down even more.
Things were gloomy until the hot dog man had a great idea. He called all his employees together. Even the ones that had been let go. He told them something like this. "Sometimes things are easy and sometimes things are hard. It's easy to lose your way when things are hard." He admitted that he had been scared by this recession.
Then he went on. "Things have been hard lately. BUT, we are going to go back to doing what worked before. We will buy a better hot dog. We will run a few ads. We will get all the carts out of storage. And everybody will have a job. I don't care what it costs." Only one thing", he added, "Ya gotta give every customer a smile with their hot dog". They promised they would. And so they did.
Sure enough... sales went up.
And they keep going up to this very day.
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And it's a lot easier than cleaning carpets ;D ;D
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I would be eating the profits :D
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Hi Fraser / Mike,
Thanks for the compliments,
I used a prespray of Trafficlean and and a touch of Ultrapac Pro. The stains were pre-treated with 'Krudcutter' :o Now you might just guess that it's American....hence the slogan, "You Got KRUD, Get Krudcutter" ! ::)
Well I stumbled across this product by accident but believe me it's very very good. Invented by a Brit from the Midlands apparently. Couldn't get anyone here to back him so crossed the pond and became a multi millionaire :o 8)
I'm not sure where the magazine came from mike...probably my van.
The funny thing about all those stains was that the area shown is actually the Parents waiting area ....must be too many E additives in the coffee ;)
Les
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Just a footnote to my post having spoken to someone in an electrician yesterday.
He said had we thought of the other reason people are able to undercut your price.....
the fact that the person giving the quote doesn't own the business but will be using the companies equipment and chemicals to do the job ! :o
No overheads, just clear, Tax Free Profit !
That could be the case on the job I lost to the pub.
Les
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It's a good point and it's certainly happened to me in the past.
robert m