Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: kevin James on January 31, 2009, 12:24:26 pm
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I've been a wc for 7 years, 3 years wfp. My experience, in line with the prevailing economics, means I can charge £6.50 for a 3 bed & still earn £30 /hour. I'm now advertising this in local press & am getting custies changing from guys charging £16.50. Sound sense or not?
Kevin.
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If you are happy with your hourly rate then it doesnt matter what others charge
But why not charge a minimum of £10 you earn more per hour and are still more than competitive with your competition
On the other side the window cleaners you are taking work from might not see it that way and take offence and react towards you
Its your business you run it the way it suits you
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You could charge £10, still be very competitive but earn 50 pound an hour instead of 30. That would be sensible.
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If your happy with your daily takings, why are you concerned about others? Business is business. If you have worked hard, built experience & are happy with £6.50, no one else's opinion should count.
Your in business to please yourself, not worry about local competition & how much you might upset them. Your not running a charity or doing it out of the good of your heart. In the "current economic climate", you have to look after yourself. Selfish? yes. Should you care? hell no!
Would you rather keep charging high & plodding along, losing a few to other cheaper guys, risking losing it all, or do as you plan and get in there to secure your future.
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charge whatever you are comfortable charging.
If you want to charge less, then charge less, if you want to charge more then charge more.
So long as you are making a living with your prices, that is sustainable to you and your family then do what you feel is right.
Price is not the be all and end all - there is also other things to think about like your service, your manner etc...
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As everyone says, charge what you feel comfortable with. I have to say £6.50 sound low to me, you must be flogging yourself to death to keep up the £30/hour rate for a full day, five days a week.
You're only an 'undercutter' if you canvass and ask people what they're paying now, and then offer to do it for less. There's nothing legally wrong with that, but if you do it, watch your back ;D
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No wonder you are getting the custom at your prices. Good on ya if you can make a good living at that. £16.50 for a 3 bed? They deserve to lose it. Like others I would say you could still get the new business at a higher rate of say £10 to £12.00 but what you charge is up to you.
Keep it up I say.
Andrew
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seriously, 10 quid for a 3 bed is about right
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As everyone says, charge what you feel comfortable with. I have to say £6.50 sound low to me, you must be flogging yourself to death to keep up the £30/hour rate for a full day, five days a week.
You're only an 'undercutter' if you canvass and ask people what they're paying now, and then offer to do it for less. There's nothing legally wrong with that, but if you do it, watch your back ;D
This is true!! I can do 30 an hour on ladders, but not all day, only for about 6 hours, not 8 only sometimes in summer when im feeling fit :) I have done a 40 hour week once to just see if it was possible but i was hurting, stick to £10 a house and have an easy day :)
But you arent under cutting as such, you are being sensible with your business :)
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I've been a wc for 7 years, 3 years wfp. My experience, in line with the prevailing economics, means I can charge £6.50 for a 3 bed & still earn £30 /hour. I'm now advertising this in local press & am getting custies changing from guys charging £16.50. Sound sense or not?
Kevin.
Doesnt sound like sense to me, I presume you dont have much work on.
Your advertising will just make people in your area more price conscious.
Mark
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Doesnt sound like sense to me, I presume you dont have much work on.
Your advertising will just make people in your area more price conscious.
Mark
Not really, we have 750 customers on a 6 week interval. I'd rather it was eight weeks so they really appreciate you coming, plus it allows for the drop outs which will be inevitable in the coming months.
Kevin.
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£30 an hour and a seven hour day brings in good money doesn't it. Todays prices would be £10 for a 3 bedder but how many people do 5 an hour every hour? I have estates where i park my van and don't get back to it until 4 o'clock and they aren't £10. I'd rather have 5 £6.50 house in a row than have to drive to each one.It sounds ok to me!
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Doesnt sound like sense to me, I presume you dont have much work on.
Your advertising will just make people in your area more price conscious.
Mark
Not really, we have 750 customers on a 6 week interval. I'd rather it was eight weeks so they really appreciate you coming, plus it allows for the drop outs which will be inevitable in the coming months.
Kevin.
That makes even less sense to me. Why would you want to reduce the cleaning frequency and still charge the same price as a 6 week clean for an 8 week visit? I understand you want to give your customers value for money but I presume your existing customers still pay £6.50 a clean but now will only see you every 8 weeks not the original 6.
Mark
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I do agree with that.Reduced their prices by a tenner but also reduced the frequency???
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knowing the areas i would say you are very competetive at those prices and would think you have a good chance of mopping up the market. Problem is you'll then get so much work i would think you would need to employ - then your margins may be too small. I would have thought those prices would be extremely low as you get to the largest city in the area.
Getting quite worried. :-[
Have you always charged so low for three beds? If not then some existing work would have to be reduced to fall in line.
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if all his customers average out at £6.50 and is doing 750 in six weeks then that is 125 houses a week with a turnover of £750 a week, these are good earnings even after taking out running costs so i say well done your competitive not a undercutter.
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That's 25 a day - you'd need it nice and compact to keep it up every day. Is that for one person?
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25 a day is easily achievable i used to do more than that when i used ladders with wfp i bet he can do that many in a 6 hour day.
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I reckon Kevin James (the original poster) is going to make a rod for his own back and seriously regret taking on loads of cheap work.
He must be desperate?
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I reckon Kevin James (the original poster) is going to make a rod for his own back and seriously regret taking on loads of cheap work.
He must be desperate?
if the figures i worked out are correct then he is making a good living out of it and with the economic climate as it is then i feel he has more chance of retaining his customers so not having to waste time finding replacement work.
kevin states others in his area charging £16.50 for a semi if times get hard then i can see getting rid of window cleaner would be something most people would do but at £6.50 every six weeks it only works out at just over a pound a week so unless things are really bad they will keep you on.
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I honestly don't believe in all this credit crunch buisiness; okay pubs are going down, hotels and the posher class of restaraunts are suffering; shops too, but in general I think the domestic market will be as strong as ever with the exception of lower-end residential.
I live in a 3 bed semi, and if I asked someone to clean my windows, I'd expect to pay at least a tenner.
Crikey, I had a carpet fitter lay a bedroom carpet just before Christmas and he charged me £50 for what was less than an hours work; he did a good job with no fuss; and I was happy to pay.
I don't think £6.50 for a 3 bed semi is viable; not without working your socks off.
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the more houses u do, the more time spent collecting if they are in , and the more time spent on admin and envelopes etc....being cheap doesnt pay in the long run ???
there is a huge gap between £16 and £6.50...that is not being competitive , its being silly
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I wouldn't say you are undercutting, as it is an ad. However you do stand a chance of damaging the market for window cleaning where you are, I know that if I've seen a price for goods cheaper else where it makes me re examine what I'm paying. At £6.50 a house your not working at much of a profit, just a wage.
Also if someone looses a job, then from experience I've found that no matter how much they are paying they will cancel. £6.50 is still an additional not needed expense when not earning money.
Simon.
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I think that you must know your competitors charge more other wise theres no way you would advertise your price unless your expecting people to change.
Chris
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£10 is my minimum for new work but there aren't many new jobs I quote a tenner for now. £11 seems to be my new minimum unless it really is very small. I have older work kicking around for a bit less than that but will need to increase these in the Spring. I'm loathe to do it but a few jobs are way too low and wouldn't be missed if they cancelled.
If I was doing basic 3 bed semis for £6.50 it sounds like it could cause problems for me. I suppose it depends on overheads though. I imagine a quad bike is a lot cheaper to get around on than a van though I've never tried it. I'm getting a sharp reminder at the moment of why I charge what I do (by no means high compared to some here). This week £200 for 3 tyres. 2 - 3 weeks time another £200 for front discs and pads plus £50ish for the MOT plus maybe rear pads. Also, a tax bill which I will be a bit late paying due to cashflow and too many customers who think that their window cleaner can live on fresh air.
I feel like going out there, putting a big spurt on for new work (it IS still out there) and dumping the worst quarter of my round. I always do better when I channel my stress in a healthy direction.
So what I'm saying is that this money we receive (when they can be bothered to pay us) is NOT wages. It's turnover.
Of course £6.50 is quite doable with low overheads and low or non-existent debt levels. It can be done. But why do it when you can get a tenner and be pretty sure of keeping the work?
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It's up to him if he wants do do it for as little as £6.50 (personally I'd want 9 or 10 quid), but the other guy charging £16.50?
I'm glad he's losing work. Good on you. ;)
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a friend of the family who happens to be a self made millionaire once gave me the advice, that unless some people tell you while doing a quote that your too expensive then your not charging enough.
This is very true. If you get approx 60 to70% of the jobs you quote for on residential then your prices are right for the area.
I do think that price you are charging is too low based on the other prices at £16.50 but if I had tried to charge £16 or £17 for a 3 bed I would have probably got ZERO percent of the jobs in this area.
As to the credit crunch I do think that it will hit the domestic market. Hmmm well if you are charging over the odds it deffo will hit you. There will be a lot more window cleaners around at low prices so those charging "top end" prices will be hit the hardest I think.
Do a good job at a reasonable price and all will be OK (Hopefully)
Andrew
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I cant understand for the life of me why you would want to work at such a dramatically low rate of pay (busy fool) I know you'll guarantee yourself work, but be reasonable to yourself, theres no need; your harming your own business as well as others.
Im wondering if its a windup.
They are rates a newbie would charge.
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Personally I think advertising in the Local paper at £6.50 for a semi is damaging the market, and the others near you may get damaged as a result.
People may think this is the benchmark price. Its not.
Why do it so low, why not £10, or something realistic?
What was your motive for doing this? More custies, knock out the compo,?or what?
This is nearly in the silly league IMO.
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Phew!
Why on earth work so cheap?
I was charging those prices for a semi 10/15 years ago.
You are WFP so quicker than before, but your running costs are now far higher than before, dropping your prices so low will eventually eat into your margins.
Did I read that you used "WE" when referring to the work you have?
If there are two of you then £750 per week isn't so good, plus maintaining that workrate day in day out, for month after month isn't really sustainable.
To advertise a semi at £6.50 just has to be misleading, some will have more windows than others, some will have conservatories and porches, some will have access issues...
If the average price in your area is around £16.00 for a semi then that is pretty high, as others have said, don't put in such a huge drop in price...why on earth would you want to work so cheap?
I know you might work out that you can knock out 5 an hour ( I am assuming that you are in fact a one man outfit) over the course of a day, and maybe even average that over a working week, but 5 an hour is above the average, few will manage that, especially all day long and then all week long.
Even though 5 in an hour isn't exceptional very few will have work that is so compact that they can sustain that day afer day.
A more realistic average is 3 an hour over the course of the average person's round...and even that is allowing that almost all of your work is is 3 bed semi's!
that way, if you want to earn £30 an hour your average price will need to be a tenner.
At that price you are still far cheaper than your opposition, and when you have days where you knock out 5 or 6 an hour you earn very good money indeed.
Being fast doesn't mean you have to keep dropping your prices!
This is how you boost your earnings, you are quicker than the opposition (not that it matters if you aren't of course) you are cheaper than them but are still earning a top income (theoretically) but even on poor days your income is still ok.
And of course you also need to factor in rain affected days, holidays, bank holidays, lazy days, days lost through illness and those days where you just can't get it together, days when your equipment will breakdown.
If you are happy with your earnings then more power to your elbow...but you are not working to your potential, I'd say you are shooting yourself in the foot.
Ian
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It's up to him if he wants do do it for as little as £6.50 (personally I'd want 9 or 10 quid), but the other guy charging £16.50?
I'm glad he's losing work. Good on you. ;)
Why are you glad hes losing work?? Would you still be glad if it was your job at a tenner and someone took it from you for £6.50.
As a generalisation discounting is not the way forward, you can only clean one window at a time.
Mark
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It's up to him if he wants do do it for as little as £6.50 (personally I'd want 9 or 10 quid), but the other guy charging £16.50?
I'm glad he's losing work. Good on you. ;)
Why are you glad hes losing work?? Would you still be glad if it was your job at a tenner and someone took it from you for £6.50.
Yes i would be annoyed if it was my job at a tenner, but £16.50 is a rip-off, so good enough for the greedy git.
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It all comes down too running cost and what commitments each of us have, I know the figure i need to earn each week to keep the business running and a roof over my head. Dosent mean i would start cleaning windows cheaply. wheres some dont have outleys each week.
Me: Half decent van, superb van mount poles etc, fully insured, reliable service, Mortgage payer.
Man in car: R reg estate, 30ft point ladder, No insurance, Un-realiable. Council tennant.
Sorry if this offends but this is how i see it.
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You are an undercutter and competitive. And I believe you are underpricing yourself as mentioned above you will not sustain that hourly rate over a month.
I have a group of about twelve ex council semis which are within 200 meters and two van moves of each other - no bays easy access and without conservatory I charge £11. But some of my older ones are still on at £ 7.50 or £5.50 for the front and sides only. (Gate issues).
Added together they equal £105 and take me just under three hours if I work briskly. Their average price is thus about £8.50.
If my round was all that compact then I would be happy with it as it would work out at over £200 for a six hour day. But it isn't.
So I reckon our man is a bit on the low side and should be going in at a tenner perhaps saying if you and your neighbour sign up it will be £9.50.
Other 3 bed semi's (Edwardian with two bay sash windows, poor access and a few side windows or mid thirties two faceted bays then I charge at £20 and £13.50 respectively) are priced differently as are those with porches aned conservatories.
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If your happy with your daily takings, why are you concerned about others? Business is business. If you have worked hard, built experience & are happy with £6.50, no one else's opinion should count.
Your in business to please yourself, not worry about local competition & how much you might upset them. Your not running a charity or doing it out of the good of your heart. In the "current economic climate", you have to look after yourself. Selfish? yes. Should you care? hell no!
Would you rather keep charging high & plodding along, losing a few to other cheaper guys, risking losing it all, or do as you plan and get in there to secure your future.
interesting mr jj.
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I think the w/c industry is in for a shake with regards pricing of work.
We all know more people are starting and they will be keen for the work.
If you are excessive with prices then you may lose a few or many.
Why pay more for the same job.
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That makes even less sense to me. Why would you want to reduce the cleaning frequency and still charge the same price as a 6 week clean for an 8 week visit? I understand you want to give your customers value for money but I presume your existing customers still pay £6.50 a clean but now will only see you every 8 weeks not the original 6.
Mark
Why doesn't 8 weeks make sense? It doesn't take any longer to clean, you're still earning £30/hour andit matters less when you lose customers. You can always drop back to 6?weeks.
Kevin.
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I think the w/c industry is in for a shake with regards pricing of work.
We all know more people are starting and they will be keen for the work.
If you are excessive with prices then you may lose a few or many.
Why pay more for the same job.
ive been saying this for the best part of 12 months
keep it real and you will be ok, hammer them customers for all you can, and some1 will come along who doesnt
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knowing the areas i would say you are very competetive at those prices and would think you have a good chance of mopping up the market. Problem is you'll then get so much work i would think you would need to employ - then your margins may be too small. I would have thought those prices would be extremely low as you get to the largest city in the area.
Getting quite worried. :-[
Have you always charged so low for three beds? If not then some existing work would have to be reduced to fall in line.
Dont worry dave, once I hit 8 week intervals the ad will change. In fact the ad only runs for a year.
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That's 25 a day - you'd need it nice and compact to keep it up every day. Is that for one person?
Aye, just me on the quad. You wouldn't believe how easy it makes this job. No parking hassles. Reels at a decent height, park & go. ( that's mine ironics!)
Kevin.
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I reckon Kevin James (the original poster) is going to make a rod for his own back and seriously regret taking on loads of cheap work.
He must be desperate?
Not desperate. Just not greedy. Wfp is so much quicker & what benefit is it to the custies unless there charges are lowered? Most custies see trad as doing a more thorough job.
I'm happy at £200 a day, no debt, no wages to pay, spend £10 week on fuel & I'm protecting myself against reduced incomes
Kevin.
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If you've been cleaning for seven years why haven't you got a full round? Or are you saying you have a full round of six weekly customers but by extending the cleans you need to expand even further to take up the shortfall? Then by having such a massive round should you loose for example ten percent of customers due to the credit crunch statistically you will loose a smaller number of your round? Surely within no time you'll be at saturation point?
Does this also open up the debate of wfp cleans lasting longer than trad methods?
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Your not competitive or an undercutter your desperate.
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the more houses u do, the more time spent collecting if they are in , and the more time spent on admin and envelopes etc....being cheap doesnt pay in the long run ???
there is a huge gap between £16 and £6.50...that is not being competitive , its being silly
I spend 3 hours on a Friday night collecting. This is for cash flow & slow payers. The rest comes in cheques.
Whether it was 1000 custies or less, you'd still cope on this sort of time input.
Who is not happy on £1000 a week with no employees?
Kevin.
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Your not competitive or an undercutter your desperate.
no! just silly ...helll make awage , but thats all :o
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It won`t be long before he`s doing those jobs thinking the other bloke was getting double what i was and they were paying it for years,how long do you think it would take to not only get that price back up to the original 1 but a few quid more,i`ll tell you how long a life time.
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Your not competitive or an undercutter your desperate.
This all works cos 95% of my work is within 2 miles of me. So the £6.50 advert covers this area so I'm into consolidating further. This figure should bring in the folks who have never considered a window cleaner. Around a £1 a week?
Kevin
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So, a mega compact round makes some sense. Mine is nowhere near compact enough to withstand those prices without working like Billy Wizz. ;D
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It won`t be long before he`s doing those jobs thinking the other bloke was getting double what i was and they were paying it for years,how long do you think it would take to not only get that price back up to the original 1 but a few quid more,i`ll tell you how long a life time.
I don't worry about individual prices. I'm in & out, aiming for that £200 a day. Nothing else matters, certainly not worrying what should have been. Fix your targets & aim for them. Again is £200 a day with mnimal overheads a busy fool?
Kevin.
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Your not competitive or an undercutter your desperate.
This all works cos 95% of my work is within 2 miles of me. So the £6.50 advert covers this area so I'm into consolidating further. This figure should bring in the folks who have never considered a window cleaner. Around a £1 a week?
Kevin
When things pickup your mindset will change believe me i`ve been there when i took some underpriced work up years ago,they end up being your wet day work if there lucky.
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It won`t be long before he`s doing those jobs thinking the other bloke was getting double what i was and they were paying it for years,how long do you think it would take to not only get that price back up to the original 1 but a few quid more,i`ll tell you how long a life time.
I don't worry about individual prices. I'm in & out, aiming for that £200 a day. Nothing else matters, certainly not worrying what should have been. Fix your targets & aim for them. Again is £200 a day with mnimal overheads a busy fool?
Kevin.
I don`t know i don`t work for £200 a day lol. ;D
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It won`t be long before he`s doing those jobs thinking the other bloke was getting double what i was and they were paying it for years,how long do you think it would take to not only get that price back up to the original 1 but a few quid more,i`ll tell you how long a life time.
I don't worry about individual prices. I'm in & out, aiming for that £200 a day. Nothing else matters, certainly not worrying what should have been. Fix your targets & aim for them. Again is £200 a day with mnimal overheads a busy fool?
Kevin.
I don`t know i don`t work for £200 a day lol. ;D
lool
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£200 a day - £4 runnng costs. Not good enough? Ok the warranty on the bike runs out in 18 months so the overheads will increase & I'll cross that bridge then.
Things are gonna get real tough out there so imhappy this a gonna keep this show on the road.
Kevin.
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Only joking i know a mans gotta do and all that but i would be less than impressed if it happend to me not that it would,you might aswell put flyers through the doors when the window cleaners there doing them.If your that much cheaper a lot of people wouldn`t take you on cos they`d think you`d be here today and gone tomorrow and WC`s that cheap normally are and that`s a fact we have all had the saying said to us by customers,the last bloke just stopped coming.
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i have cleaned windows for 27 years and the last seven have seen prices go absolutely stupid, window cleaning isnt a skilled job and even less so now we have wfp, with more people trying out window cleaning then i think kevins prices will soon be the norm [ how many unskilled jobs do you know that can earn £30 an hour]. no one wants prices to fall but it will soon happen it did in the late eighties especially with commercial work.
if you do a good job and someone undercuts you by a pound then the customer will more than likely stick with what they know but to be offered a reduction from £16 to£6.50 a think most apart from the well off will swap.
kevin sounds like he has a good work ethic and doesnt worry what others are making,he knows in the real world £200 a day is brilliant and fair play to him.
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Only joking i know a mans gotta do and all that but i would be less than impressed if it happend to me not that it would,you might aswell put flyers through the doors when the window cleaners there doing them.If your that much cheaper a lot of people wouldn`t take you on cos they`d think you`d be here today and gone tomorrow and WC`s that cheap normally are and that`s a fact we have all had the saying said to us by customers,the last bloke just stopped coming.
Point taken! The ad carries a picture of the quad & this is seen all round this area each week. And I've been active around here for 7 years. The ad's been running for 4 months & now the calls are coming in stronger. People are talking & having such a strong Market identity reinforces your presence. And a very reasonable charge?
Kevin
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i think not a bad idea. in 6 months to a year you can put prices up a pound then again 6 months time another pound by which time the cred crunch will hopefully be over and you will be laughing. Thats what id do if was aiming to beat the competition in this climate. Fair play
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Havnt read the whole thread so forgive me if someones metioned this already.
Advertising a price without seeing the property is a very risky business if you ask me, especially when the price your quoting is on the low side. Presumably, the propertys in your area vary in design,What about access issues, extensions, different size windows,windows above flat roofs, People arnt going to be too chuffed if you quote one price than start increasing it to allow for these things. Cant help thinking you'll come unstuck in the long run.Nothing worse than doing a house where you know you've made a mistake with the price, you end up resenting doing it.
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i think not a bad idea. in 6 months to a year you can put prices up a pound then again 6 months time another pound by which time the cred crunch will hopefully be over and you will be laughing. Thats what id do if was aiming to beat the competition in this climate. Fair play
Some Customers moan if you put the price up every 5 years let alone every 6 months
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that is so true ;D
you feeling ok Stan, not often you agree with things I say, warming to me are you lol
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Oh yes ;D
The churchill dog better watch out there is a new kid on the block ;)
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Quote
That makes even less sense to me. Why would you want to reduce the cleaning frequency and still charge the same price as a 6 week clean for an 8 week visit? I understand you want to give your customers value for money but I presume your existing customers still pay £6.50 a clean but now will only see you every 8 weeks not the original 6.
Mark
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Why doesn't 8 weeks make sense? It doesn't take any longer to clean, you're still earning £30/hour andit matters less when you lose customers. You can always drop back to 6?weeks.
Kevin
Because your still working the same hours every week and are no better off financially. And losing a customer on an 8 week frequency loses you the same ammount of money per week as it did before.
The way your proposal comes accross to me is that in theory say you charged £6.50 a clean and only cleaned once a year then you you would still earn £30 an hour PROVIDED you had 6500 customers.
If your gross margin was 60% of turnover and you increased your price by 10% you could afford to lose 14% of your customer base and still earn £30 an hour. And you can do this easily on an 8 week call frequency and still save the customer money on what they pay per week for a clean now.
eg Current Price 6 weekly £6.50 =£1.08 a week
10% increase on £6.50 = £7.25 which would equal 90.65 p per week on an 8 week call cycle.
Customer pays less per week and you earn more. And if you lose 14% of them through the recession your still earning the £30 an hour you want to protect( and these figures are based on you not picking up a single new customer just working with the ones you already have)
Mark
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id say if your happy earning £200 a day then fair play, i would, thats still a very good wage per week, id say £6.50 is about right tbh, there are far too many that charge way over the odds imo, fair enough these guys will have larger outgoings as they may have got 15k in the hole for a ionics system and van that a domestic customer couldnt give a toss about, all they want is clean windows, and if a guy comes along and does it with his home built system and older van a tenner cheaper than the next guy of course they will change, they are still having the same job done for less
only exceptions would maybe be the "keeping up with the jones's" types
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Your not competitive or an undercutter your desperate.
This all works cos 95% of my work is within 2 miles of me. So the £6.50 advert covers this area so I'm into consolidating further. This figure should bring in the folks who have never considered a window cleaner. Around a £1 a week?
Kevin
I thought that might be the case as I know you do it from a quad bike. Even with a van, if all my round was within two miles and I was debt free, I could do it for £6.50 as well. The low price feeds the compactness and the compactness allows a low price. It's a business model that can work in certain situations. It would not be practical for me. I live in a town where 90% of the houses only have rear access via going through the house so I must travel out more. I also am repaying some high debts so need to cover those too. In addition to that, although I'm in the southeast, it's a more working class part of the southeast in my more immediate area, so I prefer to travel out a bit to get the rates.