[amayze]

I just don't believe how many crooks there are in this game !!

1) Asked to quote an office block today, all ground floor easy peasy. As I was shown round it was clear that they have been robbed for months. All the windows were disgusting, some clearly haven't been done for months, yet been paying this old codger every month for months.

When asked why they called me, it was because their suspicions were raised when they watched him last week and wonder why he wasn't using any water !!
(I kid you not........)

2) Did the insides of a new kitchen this afternoon, nothing too difficult, new patio doors, window above sink and top half of a side door for a customer who has been on my round for the past couple of months.

Got chatting, he only turned round to me and said that I was the only wc he knew that worked thro the winter, he said his previous wc's only worked in the summer !! He presumed that they worked extra hard in the summer and saved enough money to see them thro the winter !!

As Victor would say .....Unbelievable !

[sunshine windows]

Completely agree!!

Did an old peoples home on Monday and they'd had a regular window cleaner but the windows were grimey as.

Way more build up than just interim dust between cleans

[daz1977]

lol  didnt use water  thats a classic

it might have one of those water free window cleaning systems,  

[daz1977]

i was reading a story on the net about some bloke in london, who was going around canverssing for work and when the custy said yes, he got them to pay there and then that way the lads didnt ahve to carry money incase they was robbed,  loads payed up 


http://www.london-se1.co.uk/forum/read/1/49464  

[amayze]

Trouble is Daz, when we went to the staff room for the obligatory cuppa, two other people walked in and both of them told that he wasn't using water !!

One even said the windows would have been cleaner if he had used his tongue !

[daz1977]

how did he clean them, just a few cloths wiping the window

[amayze]

No, I believe it was just the ONE cloth !

[ccmids]

sunshine i like your van , smart set up very good choice of colour and very tidy sorry to butt in .

[daz1977]

r u sure he wasnt the karate kid, wipe off wipe on

on a serious note i bet people remember this joker more than a brill wc who turns up each week and cleans them

[amayze]

Daz, you are probably right

Now I know where I've been going wrong, I've invested to heavily in my materials .......I mean this guy was making a living from just one cloth ! His gotta have the lowest overheads possible. Pure 99% profit ...not bad eh?

[amayze]

Best make that 99.5% - it was probably a j-cloth and they are quite cheap !

[daz1977]

more likely his wifes tea towels, if he cant be bothered with water, dont think he will spend the money on decent cloths

[Ian Lancaster]

No, I believe it was just the ONE cloth !

Now, now children :

When I learned the job, this was a perfectly good and accepted way to do it.  It was called "ragging" and required a great deal of skill, strength and agility to do it.

A good "ragger" could render the filthiest window clean and shiny by the use of a properly prepared scrim, and probably in about half the time you youngsters take to WFP it.

Believe me, when the price for a whole "three decker" London school - inside and out and including all the "tish" (interior glass partitioning) was £10, you had to be able to "rag" - all the windows were made up of tiny squares of glass ("stamps") and the only practical way to clean them in those days was ragging.

Mind you -I'm not saying yer man here is an expert ragger, sounds more like a chancer to me

[sparklebright]

Less of a 'ragger' more like a BLAGGER I think   

[sparklebright]

Guy down here in Margate does it. (You know who you are)

Often with his work he doesn't do them but still invoices the Head Office. In time people realise and ditch him, but it takes some time. Me and some other people have all picked up jobs off him. But of course he gets fresh mugs by quoting very cheaply...
But the truth is that often people just don't notice.
Personally my conscience would bother me if I did that, but I guess some people ignore theirs long enough and it goes away and stops bothering them.  :

Give a little whistle