[davids3511]

By the way, I have his address now too. He lives in another town about 5 miles away. A brand new estate is in the processing of being built there, about 400 houses so far. Guess where I am leafletting tomorrow evening and canvassing next week!!

[drakestar!]

love it, tell us how you get on!

[mark dew]

By the way, I have his address now too. He lives in another town about 5 miles away. A brand new estate is in the processing of being built there, about 400 houses so far. Guess where I am leafletting tomorrow evening and canvassing next week!!

heeheehee

Don't forget to target the show homes 1st.
Prepare a little pack with what services you provide and offer to do them free if they will pass on your details to all new buyers. 

He's peeing against the wind that's for sure.
It could be a blessing in disguise for you.
As i said earlier i think you will struggle for a long time to build and keep a good round based on housing estates. (which is what i suspect the other wc is finding out.)
If you can, find out what church/parish magazines cover the little villages outside your area and get an advert in those.
A £10 a year advert has provided me with 90% (directly and indirectly) of the work i do now. Higher rates in the villages and once you get a foothold you will probably leave town work for good.
The competition among wc will always be greater in urban areas.
Whatever you can earn on these estates per house will probably be about 50% of what the same house in the countryside will happily pay.

[colley614]

Or better still post his telephone number on here and we can all give him a call and tell him we have got a new window cleaner in his area and would be wondering if he would do ours for free for 3 months instead of me using this window cleaner! 

[colley614]

Sorry to double post if I have but what your saying has just brought a flash back from today before my eye's. Pulled into my road today and there is a window cleaner in my street cleaning away. So he looks at the ladders then looks in the boot and see's a load of buckets and scrims and stuff then I get the  . So I carried on pulled up outside my house and started getting my gear out. He walks up the road and says " Thought you were on my patch then" so I said " No your on mine!"  I gets it again. So I says " Do mine if you want?" and he laughed. Whats so funny I thought turning a job down, why can I never find a window cleaners. How come no one canvasses my house bloody good job my house and I wouldn't grumble for what they charged!

[davids3511]

I had a drive past his house today, just to see if was the mansion of someone who 'could afford to do three months of free cleans'. It is a house split into 6 bedsits. I was desperate to post one of my leaflets through the door but though that would be adding fuel to the fire.

Instead I just canvassed the estate again and got two new customers!

[colley614]

Keep it up mate or show your new custy your insurance details and tell them to ask anyone else knocking for their insurance 

[Paul Coleman]

I had a drive past his house today, just to see if was the mansion of someone who 'could afford to do three months of free cleans'. It is a house split into 6 bedsits. I was desperate to post one of my leaflets through the door but though that would be adding fuel to the fire.

Instead I just canvassed the estate again and got two new customers!

Well done.  Just keep your side of the street clean and don't worry about what the others do.  That way you will do alright.

[davids3511]

He is a cheapo too.

Apparantly he is WFP and charges £6.00 for a three floor house with 13 windows!!! I wonder if he is declaring/signing on???

[mark dew]

I must admit my hackles would rise if i had gone through the same experience as you, but the more you're telling us about this bloke the more i'm feeling sorry for him.
Move on as soon as you can davids, or it will eat away at you until you corner yourself and have to act. After this has cooled down he might turn out to be a ally. Sometimes you don't get the best out of anyone until you've had the worst.

[Paul Coleman]

He is a cheapo too.

Apparantly he is WFP and charges £6.00 for a three floor house with 13 windows!!! I wonder if he is declaring/signing on???

More fool him then.  At those rates, he could keep the whole estate for all I would care.  He probably earns reasonable money if it's very compact work and if he works hard.  Carry on workjing smart, be content to build it gradually, and you will end up earning twice what he earns with less effort.

[Biscute]

You see the reason he does this is in alot of cases new window cleaners dont have much of a clue and just want the work, iv seen it done on a friends round. Then they end up taking one of the others customers for a stupid price then not doing it after two cleans. This then leads to you picking the job back up and you geting them saying ' well the last window cleaner done it for this much '. At the end of the day it is just a pain in the behind and that is the reason he will not want you on his patch. As for the houses that are not built yet he would have picked them up as they were in his area.

But you need to make a living too and if you cant find work you gota get it somwere so you may as well try what you can.

[steve m]

just come in on this one and dont have time to read all replies, but if this guy is claiming all the houses not yet built, what about people like me that clean newbuilds and leave flyers for the people moving in. Does this mean he's taking work of "my patch" ??

[davids3511]

Hi Biscute

I disagree. The reason he does this is that he doesn't want competition. You make it sound like he is some saint, doing everyone a favour and making sure they have a regular window cleaner. He rang me and told me to get off his patch and that if I didn't he was going to target all my customers to basically run me out of town.

As for under pricing, I charge alot more than he does.

"As for the houses that are not built yet he would have picked them up as they were in his area", I won't even comment on that. To me that is a ridiculous statement. Do you think Tesco look at a town and go ‘oooh, there is a Sainsbury’s already there. Maybe we should be a sport and go elsewhere so as not to upset them’.

[mark dew]

Hi Biscute"As for the houses that are not built yet he would have picked them up as they were in his area", I won't even comment on that. To me that is a ridiculous statement. Do you think Tesco look at a town and go ‘oooh, there is a Sainsbury’s already there. Maybe we should be a sport and go elsewhere so as not to upset them’.

How true this is. I dunno what it's like in the cities but around here there are several wc working the same estates. All friendly enough and no bad feeling.
Biscute had a point though about the pricing. In my limited experience of housing estates the customers are mainly interested in price. Nothing more.
Quality customers and prices seem to be few and far between on estates.
Always playing wc's off of each other for the cheapest price.
As you will begin to notice when you've had a presence on them for a while.

[davids3511]

He got another one today. A house I quoted £12.00 for he is doing for £5.00

I am going to bide my time for a few weeks now. The next step is to see if he is signing on. If he is, bingo!

[W C R Ltd]

This reminds me of a trip we done to newcastle (south tyneside) Canvassing!

There are certain estates where you do not canvass due to this agreement with window cleaners that this is there patch/s. Mainly council estates, where people are on benefits and window cleaning part time for beer money, cleaning houses for £1-£3 per house, with beer cloths. This was fact, i felt for the company we were representing.

Even commercial buildings were being cleaned for peanuts, the point is we could not compete with some of the window cleaners prices due to there low low prices and threatening patch control (as they called it).

If this posts relates to you then please dont be offended, this was just our 1 week experience of hard to target areas.

ADVICE:

We knock 6 hours a day 3 days a week (as we have knocked thousands of doors all over the country) choose your areas wisely, remember this is your business and lively-hood, so DONT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY SEARCHING IN THE WRONG JUNGLE.

[xxmattyxx]

He got another one today. A house I quoted £12.00 for he is doing for £5.00

I am going to bide my time for a few weeks now. The next step is to see if he is signing on. If he is, bingo!

What part of the country are you in?

[Paul Coleman]

Hi Biscute

I disagree. The reason he does this is that he doesn't want competition. You make it sound like he is some saint, doing everyone a favour and making sure they have a regular window cleaner. He rang me and told me to get off his patch and that if I didn't he was going to target all my customers to basically run me out of town.

As for under pricing, I charge alot more than he does.

"As for the houses that are not built yet he would have picked them up as they were in his area", I won't even comment on that. To me that is a ridiculous statement. Do you think Tesco look at a town and go ‘oooh, there is a Sainsbury’s already there. Maybe we should be a sport and go elsewhere so as not to upset them’.

Of course there is no guidance on how big a "patch" is either.
Right then.  I'm going to run every other window cleaner out of Sussex.  I want Sussex all to myself.

[NWH]

You can`t have it all to yourself,i have half of it LOL.