At the end of the day like all things you get what you pay for, it doesn't bother me if a customer thinks my prices are too much, I would say we are pretty middle of the road price wise. Our pricing breakdown means people with bigger houses pay more. This helps us I think, a person with a small one or two beds home most probably has cheap carpets that you can whip out quite quickly and still get great results. Someone with a five bedroom house will more likely have more costly carpets, these customers will have more cash and more appreciation of the time, skill and cost of cleaning thier carpet professionally. Nearly all our quotes are done over the phone and I explain that the price may rise or reduce slightly upon full inspection. That way I am covered either way. I have no outlay spending time on an initial visit just to get a price, so I am quids in straight away. To be honest I have never revised a price once I got to the job. I have only had one complaint from a rust mark from forgetting to put down a cover under a table with metal studs, twenty minutes after we received the call the mark was removed from the carpet and the customer has been back many times since. I dont do a square metre price and his method works for me, I work out the time it will take. I average 50p to £1.50 per minute per job from which I can work out I am definately making profit. If a customer questions my price rather than get shirty I explain to them what I have just told you, educate your customer rather than be offended that they have looked else where. Also, I would not use local papers, customer satisfaction is key for us and recommendation is free. We offer customers who recommend us to friends discounts on thier next clean, but we dont tell them that so we know they do because they want to and not so they save a tenner. Anyone with a green Numatic can put an ad in the paper or yellow pages, I find people dont trust the sources so much these days. So keep smiling carpet cleaner cos that will get you more work too, one of our customers uses us because her old carpet cleaner was a miserable sod.