[Hilton]

£26.00

Notice no mention of the stairs, perhaps this is the way to bump the price up, otherwise its £13.00 they earn for each booking.

[wynne jones]

It's because those Rds don't do stairs. Like Darleks.   

[Joe W Brown]

I just had a campaign with groupon.

The tend to insist on 3 rooms for £29 as their standard deal for carpet clean and are not very willing to budge.

Obviously in this case they have made concessions and counted hall & landing as 1 room and cut the price.

Its less than £13. Its £11.60 per booking for £29 deal, even less for this £26 deal I imagine. Just about pays for petrol and chemicals.

[Neil Jones]

Do these people who use groupon hope to take a hit and gain a customer for their database? Surely the next time when they have their carpets cleaned and you tell them your real price they will just say 'no' I'm going back to groupon.

[Shaun_Ashmore]

From what I understand and have found out extracting info from customers they don't know who to choose as to clean their carpets so dip their toe in the pool and go cheap to see if they like if the cleaner does well and the customer likes then they may be open to more work done but it depends on the cleaner to sell more services there and then if the customer is aloud to go cold then they may forget the feel good factor and you have to start again with an offer price or they start a fresh with another groupon company.

Shaun

[Craigp]

This is it, can you take a '£29 for two rooms' customer and move them up to £100 for two rooms next time, imo no way!!

[Shaun_Ashmore]

They aren't quite one hit wonders but you only have a limited time on most of them then you are forgotten, that can be said for alot of customers but I'd prefer to get my full price first but it does depend on how much work you have on in the first place.

Shaun

[Russ Chadd]

Groupon appeals to these types of people

1 EOT customer who is only interested in the invoice to show the agent
2 People who cant really afford to have their carpets cleaned

I watched a guy turn up to clean a neighbours 2 bed house the other day and he was booked through Groupon...
Took him all of 1 hour to do the whole lot and when i looked through the lounge window this morning the carpet looked dreadful!
Any decent carpet cleaner with any pride or self respect would never use Groupon....

[wynne jones]

Any decent carpet cleaner with any pride or self respect would never use Groupon....

[Joe W Brown]

Groupon appeals to these types of people

1 EOT customer who is only interested in the invoice to show the agent
2 People who cant really afford to have their carpets cleaned

I watched a guy turn up to clean a neighbours 2 bed house the other day and he was booked through Groupon...
Took him all of 1 hour to do the whole lot and when i looked through the lounge window this morning the carpet looked dreadful!
Any decent carpet cleaner with any pride or self respect would never use Groupon....

I recently started out carpet cleaning - have no client base whatsoever - and was adviced by someone very well established in the business that I offer free cleans to build word of mouth.

So off I went putting out leaflets. Lots of leaflets.

Groupon came along and offered to, in effect, advertise my 'free clean' to a good few thousand people + I would get expenses paid.

Who knows where it will lead in the long run, but out of my groupon deal so far (11 cleans completed) I've made a good few hundreds of pounds of sales.

My website got a boost in the search engine and just in the first day of being on groupon a few people phoned up, via my website and made bookings for multiple room cleans, bypassing the groupon offer completely.

Maybe for many cleaners on here a few hundred ££ isnt much, but if it wasnt for these sales I would have been sat on my bottom staring at an unused machine.

A good percentage of cleans (33%+) I succeed in upselling additional rooms too.

Already word of mouth has spread and friends of my groupon customers have contacted me and paid full price for cleans.

Many people have approached me when they saw my van and heard my storm outside houses. A few days ago I recieved 2 new bookings within 2 hours of being at someones house for a groupon. These 2 neighbours are now booked in, 1 for a full house clean.

Lots of people have my bottle of spotter staring them in the face, when they open the kitchen cupboard. A nurse took 20 of my cards the other day and offered to hand them out in A&E staff rooms.

Please can you explain how I am sacrificing my self respect? If you can present an easier way to market my new business I'd be very grateful.


Today I had a very happy groupon customer, who is a landlord and also owns a gym. His gym is in need of a clean.

Who knows where it will lead in the long run, but i've made enough money from groupon to invest in a heater for my storm and pay my van tax, so I am happy so far.

[Joe W Brown]

A high percentage of my groupon cleans so far have been in the Norwich Golden Triangle, the nicest area of Norwich.

I've already cleaned for 2 people with Doctor before their name, one of whom owns a local dental practise and is on the comittee for the housing association in which he lives. He asked for 20 cards to hand out, just as I was leaving.

[Joe W Brown]

I should probably point out - all this and i've only actually done 11 groupons so far!

[Susan Dean (1stclean)]

Groupon appeals to these types of people

1 EOT customer who is only interested in the invoice to show the agent
2 People who cant really afford to have their carpets cleaned

I watched a guy turn up to clean a neighbours 2 bed house the other day and he was booked through Groupon...
Took him all of 1 hour to do the whole lot and when i looked through the lounge window this morning the carpet looked dreadful!
Any decent carpet cleaner with any pride or self respect would never use Groupon....

I recently started out carpet cleaning - have no client base whatsoever - and was adviced by someone very well established in the business that I offer free cleans to build word of mouth.

So off I went putting out leaflets. Lots of leaflets.

Groupon came along and offered to, in effect, advertise my 'free clean' to a good few thousand people + I would get expenses paid.

Who knows where it will lead in the long run, but out of my groupon deal so far (11 cleans completed) I've made a good few hundreds of pounds of sales.

My website got a boost in the search engine and just in the first day of being on groupon a few people phoned up, via my website and made bookings for multiple room cleans, bypassing the groupon offer completely.

Maybe for many cleaners on here a few hundred ££ isnt much, but if it wasnt for these sales I would have been sat on my bottom staring at an unused machine.

A good percentage of cleans (33%+) I succeed in upselling additional rooms too.

Already word of mouth has spread and friends of my groupon customers have contacted me and paid full price for cleans.

Many people have approached me when they saw my van and heard my storm outside houses. A few days ago I recieved 2 new bookings within 2 hours of being at someones house for a groupon. These 2 neighbours are now booked in, 1 for a full house clean.

Lots of people have my bottle of spotter staring them in the face, when they open the kitchen cupboard. A nurse took 20 of my cards the other day and offered to hand them out in A&E staff rooms.

Please can you explain how I am sacrificing my self respect? If you can present an easier way to market my new business I'd be very grateful.


Today I had a very happy groupon customer, who is a landlord and also owns a gym. His gym is in need of a clean.

Who knows where it will lead in the long run, but i've made enough money from groupon to invest in a heater for my storm and pay my van tax, so I am happy so far.

joe my friend what you have got to understand on here is that if you dont comply to all the box ticking that 95% of people on here have been brain washed into then you wont fit in like me , so if your cheaper then they are , never done  training corse , dont pre vac the world befoure stepping out of the front door then you wont last five minutes and your nothing but a cowboy 


i could name three cleaners that have gone bump off here over the years. these people use to giveing it large about how much they were chargeing and how great they were , then one lost his house and the other two got full time jobs to feed they familys which isnt good but after the bad coments they use to give me i do grinabout it karma is a good thing

i even had one stood in my front room calling me a fool chargeing what i was chargeing now hes lost the lot and is working for somebody else ! bet his not laffing now haveing to use that crapy portable not good when your have been use to a tm for over 15years of well who the fool now

if it works for you then carry on with what your doing , as long as your paying the bills and makeing afew quid at the same time all your hard work will pay off ,

[Mike Halliday]

Joe the idea that you were going to offer a free room of cleaning to build up your client base so might as well use groupon as you will at least get some money is a slightly flawed idea,

a free room of cleaning marketing strategy is targeted, you aim it at the customers you want, but groupon is not targeted..... everyone gets the offer, you have no control

secondly the free room of cleaning strategy when done correctly involves giving the customer a full home survey while you are in the house, you would say to the customer......

"while I'm here Mrs Smith could i do a full survey of all your carpets, Then we will have a record of your cleaning needs for the future, this will save time as when you call us for any further cleaning we will  have your sizes and type of carpet on record."

although this full survay should be offered when doing a groupon job.


I think an average groupon customer does not understand  the concept of working for free to build up a client base, they believe you are making a a profit on the £29 they are paying you. so when next time they ring you and say £100 they think you are  making an unacceptable  amount of profit..... they see the first price as what it really costs..... not a discounted price.

[*Hector*]

And this is from someone who sold over 400 Groupons last year.

[james roffey]

I just want a good customer willing to pay a good fair price for what i consider an excellent job, takes a bit longer to build that kind of customer base but it filters out the ones you don't want and eventually you have a profitable business, i don't see the logic of free work, yes you will build a client base much quicker but how many of those customers did you find on price alone, when you up your prices to a realistic level a lot will find someone cheaper.

In my opinion it's a flawed business plan, you got yourself a top flite machine though for using excellent equipment alone you should charge more. You invested in the business by buying the best but you don't expect your customers to do the same !

[Russ Chadd]

The only winners here are groupon... and the carpet cleaner is putting money in their pockets!
From listening to many different stories involving carpet cleans booked through Groupon, i would say it would be near impossible
to up sell to these kind of customers, most of them are clever people who only want to spend lets say £29.00 as an example
So tell me, when your booked to clean lets say a 2 bedroom house and everything needs a proper deep clean using HWE, how
long do you take to carry out the job? bearing in mind you have the figure of £29.00 in the back of your head the minute you leave the house.
Is your heart and soul going to be put into that job? will the customer ask me back?... sure they will as long as the price isnt a penny over £29.99!
I bet 9/10 carpet cleaners who use Groupon throw their training book out the window and simply rush the job and move on to the next one... now im not saying this is what you are doing but its human nature to give less when the job isnt paying much.

Look at it another way... would you come and work for me for peanuts if  i told you i could increase traffic to your website and there's a good chance you could up sell your service on site.... i could dress it up anyway you want it as long as you think your the one who is going to benefit.

Times maybe difficult at the moment but Groupon are simply exploiting the fact that the public like to pay peanuts and they are using people like you... and it is damaging the industry by encouraging "have a go carpet cleaners" to spring up and ruin carpet cleaning as a skilled trade.



 

[Ian Gourlay]

Jo I did write something saying how can you use Groupon when you were complaining about £65 merchants last week. But  deleted it

I have  read your other posts and I have to agree with Susan how ever much it hurts
Well Done for trying different strategies perhaps when I am well and back in business we can meet up some time. Did a ma dash to Yarmouth Yesterday , ( not Carpet Cleaning) realized I need to get out more

But I do  have sympathy  for any carpet cleaner that looses his house that Susan mentioned , I have always thought the danger of Forums is that people take everything as Gospel and it will work for them. I remember a young man called Red who was on here , Leased truckmount, went on Fasttrack and hired  people to put out leaflets etc etc etc doing what could be said were the right things but he burnt out

[Jamie Lindsay]

Again said it before ill say it again ive done daily deals and trust me there are a pain nt just the cleaning bt wat ppl expect for 29 pounds is sick haha

Dont get sucked in by the no advertising fee i would say prob only 5% if tht would pay full price saw it on dragons den the other week ppl are going back to price

The groupon offer is not sustainable for a cc company imo

[Craigp]

Could not agree more with Russ's post, very well put.

Susan, you revel in someone losing their house 


I remember Red he spent out to much, it needs to be built up. Personally I did it by earning it first then buying kit with that money so I slowly built up, walking before running, borrowing lots of money for all the latest and best kit before you know what you can/are going to, earn is risky. Plus you don't even know if your like the job!

But in certain areas like Susans who knows cheap (not daft cheap) may work best, making money by higher volume, but then your need to get that higher volume. But as Russ says standards do drop when people work cheap so the customer always get what they pay for.