[martinsadie]

you guys have got me thinking,your totally right everywhere is fair game and so i wont be buying a round ill just spend 4k on leaflets and canvass every house in Edinburgh,ill not bother with the license,heck just to make sure i get the customers ill cut my overheads by not bothering with insurance and to hell with paying taxes,there thats me sorted im sure ill have a few thousand customers in no time.

id stick with buying the round. i have never canvassed why waste time 

Why waste money!   

because your earning a wage from day one instead of spending your savings to live ,unless your a dole cheat 

[martinsadie]

Stan, you spent your saving on buying the round!

Have you always been this good with money?   

yes i did but i will get them back when i sell up,like i said earning from day one 

[PaulTh]

my gf works so we figured id buy this work put £800 a month by and hey presto in 5 months time hopefully i can buy another 4k worth thats on top of what i get canvassing as i said on this thread im not one for canvassing areas where there already is window cleaners so ill just be concentrating on newbuilds which is a bit slow because of recession and those blasted banks not giving my future customers mortgages.

oh and the work wont be scattered either i dont like scattered work i prefer to go from window to window than ladders on and off van all day time is money so i reckon in 5 months time i will have £3600 of work a month all nice compact work,having not upset any fellow window cleaners doing so(apart from on here that is because of my boredom lol)

[martinsadie]

Stan, you spent your saving on buying the round!

Have you always been this good with money?   

yes i did but i will get them back when i sell up,like i said earning from day one 

Does that mean someone who marketed there round gets a bonus when they sell!
 

if you expand the round and put prices up you will get more back than you paid unless your a crap cleaner and lose customers 

[martinsadie]

Expand, and put the prices up, that’s what you paid for! To do work!   

If you buy a good round you won’t have to do either   

so when you give a price thats it for the rest of your working life 

[martinsadie]

i bought rounds where i was the sole cleaner ie my patch,they had been rundown over time,i then by reputation and reliabity filled in the gaps 

[PaulTh]

i bought rounds where i was the sole cleaner ie my patch,they had been rundown over time,i then by reputation and reliabity filled in the gaps 

smart move stan monopolise i like it

[martinsadie]

ive more work than when i started and ive sold rounds off getting a third of my outlay back 

[davids3511]

david i was saying that noone should be going into established window cleaners streets and undercutting them as they are probably not paying their taxes and thats how they can afford to do so like someone charging £4.50 in comparison to someone charging £18.50 for roughly the same house.I put the links up from a forum to show that the general public dont really care if your insured,licensed,paying taxes etc all they care about is getting a good job done at the cheapest price.And up here you need a license in most areas and when applying for the license you have to state which streets you do so if i have 95% of a streets customers and ive paid good coin for the round and got my license,pay my taxes then im not going to sit around waiting on the council,police doing their job if someone else comes in trying to take my business away from me,for one they almost certainly wont have the streets they are canvassing on their license.

i was stopped one time by a couple of police officers who asked to see my badge,after id shown them it one of them asked how much i charge as he thought his window cleaner was ripping him off charging £7 for a 3 bedroom semi.oh and another good one i know of a few guys and they did the head of the fraud squad for the dss house(none of them paid their taxes)i was told he had asked them their companies name and nxt time they went round he said he couldnt find it registered only to be told off by his wife to stop bothering the laddies as they were only out to try and make a few bob,they charged £1.50 for a 3 bed semi.

I do agree about the undercutting. However, if you do a good job and charge a sensible price you should be ok. All my customers were leafletted recently with a 'i will do your house for £5.00' leaflet. I charge and average of £11.00 for those houses and I didn't loose a single one.

[martinsadie]

ive more work than when i started and ive sold rounds off getting a third of my outlay back 

Think you have that wrong Stanley, should be, same amount of work but more money. 

i have example bought £300 a month for £2000
now have £350 a month but sold work of and banked £660
so i now own £350 a month at the cost of £1340

[martinsadie]

best deal i did was selling a round,6 hours work badly priced then 3 years later old dear pestering me to clean her windows as nobodys been for ages,so i rang the lad up i sold it to because i wouldnt pinch it off him. He said he had sold it on to a numpty, so i went and cleaned the old dear and they were filthy, over the course of 6 months without any door knocking got the full round back at better prices so quids in 

[R W C]

best deal i did was selling a round,6 hours work badly priced then 3 years later old dear pestering me to clean her windows as nobodys been for ages,so i rang the lad up i sold it to because i wouldnt pinch it off him. He said he had sold it on to a numpty, so i went and cleaned the old dear and they were filthy, over the course of 6 months without any door knocking got the full round back at better prices so quids in 

Did you break the 2 pound barrier stan 

[martinsadie]

best deal i did was selling a round,6 hours work badly priced then 3 years later old dear pestering me to clean her windows as nobodys been for ages,so i rang the lad up i sold it to because i wouldnt pinch it off him. He said he had sold it on to a numpty, so i went and cleaned the old dear and they were filthy, over the course of 6 months without any door knocking got the full round back at better prices so quids in 

Did you break the 2 pound barrier stan 

hey i got as greedy as a few on here Monday one off clean 2 windows £2 

[R W C]

wow stan you are getting daring lately,

[martinsadie]

wow stan you are getting daring lately,

i am with that house no pavement so ladder in a main rd with just the bucket behind for safety  

[martinsadie]

best deal i did was selling a round,6 hours work badly priced then 3 years later old dear pestering me to clean her windows as nobodys been for ages,so i rang the lad up i sold it to because i wouldnt pinch it off him. He said he had sold it on to a numpty, so i went and cleaned the old dear and they were filthy, over the course of 6 months without any door knocking got the full round back at better prices so quids in 

Isn’t that someone else’s patch Stan?

thats why i made the call,windows were filthy so who ever had the patch had packed in,so fair game 

[martinsadie]

Do you patches only exist in the like minded Stan, other wise it’s fair game. 

patches only exist when they are serviced , anyone who hasnt had a cleaner for several months are fair game,if the customer lies and a cleaner turns up i walk away, there are places that dont have a cleaner, found one in Jan women asked me went now have 14 jobs on 2 avenues and rising not knocked on any doors 

[martinsadie]

What if the took a 8-9 month break for whatever reason?

well id walk away,thats just happened somewhere else i cleaned for 18 months, he rented the work out while doing something else they mismanaged the round and missed a street because of bad climbs, i chap i know begged me to go for 2  months ,finally gave in and then picked up full st, old cleaner came back and i walked away, customers not happy but i have standards 

[martinsadie]

Why, what reasons, what standards?

customers prefered me on the dot every 2 week he had let them down, my standards he had paid for the work so gave it back, i have plenty dont need a turf war 

[AuRavelling79]

hi cozy,i havent bought the round as yet,im just saying if i thought about the window cleaning business like some do on here then i wouldnt bother forking out for work if any tom,dick or harry could just nick it from me,my gf told me few weeks ago that her mother and her neighbours arent happy with their window cleaner and i could go do theirs but i dont think that way i guess im old fashioned.Every window cleaner i know and i know loads through the west coast and they all the think the same way,keeping to your own areas,not stepping on others toes basically do to others as youd have done to yourselves,karma has its way of biting you in the ass,its different if an old boy gives up the ghost or someone has an accident in which case we normally help the guy out with his work till he decides hes ready to come back,infact the only wcer i met with a different attitude is the jehovah guy.

Are "scouser jehovah guys" who move to be near their girlfriend's allowed to have patches Paul? And when you send them "back to where they came from" how do you do it?