[simon knight]

I was this morning doing my little row of 2 up 2 down terraces (11 of them all in a line and I charge £10 a pop, front and back). Woman comes up to me and says: "I've just had my windows cleaned but could you pop over and tell tell me how much you'd charge".

Goes over and it's a fair bit bigger: 3 beds, 2 reception, kitchen, one bathroom, one downstairs loo and 4 veluxes. All very accessable. In and out 90 minutes if I was hungover and in lazy mode

ME: How much have you just been charged?
HER: £110...took the 2 of them about an hour.
 
ME: You've been shafted love...£40 with me.
HER: See you in 2 months time and every 2 months after please.

Result: Rip-off merchants £110....Simon Knight £240pa for as long as she lives there

OK, they did a fair job...but £110 for an hours work???

Question:  Is my attitude right?

[daz1977]

yea,  some one wont be happy when they next turn up lol

[AuRavelling79]

Hang on - she gets in and out done for a £110 and it takes two man-hours yeah?

If I've got that right they are earning £55ph each.

You are offering to do it for £40 and for two hours (those inside veluxes can be a bit more time consuming) you'd get £20 ph.

You reckon you can do it in 90 mins and so that's about £26.66 per hour.

If that is true I think (especially as you know their price) you could have prolly gone for £55 - half price and both of you would have been happy.

Sorry to rain (well drizzle a bit) on your parade.

[landy2]

it is a dog eat dog world

[simon knight]

You are offering to do it for £40 and for two hours (those inside veluxes can be a bit more time consuming) you'd get £20 ph.

You reckon you can do it in 90 mins and so that's about £26.66 per hour.

The veluxes are low level...stand on a kitchen stool low level, so no problem there.

As I say 90 mins top whack...£26.66ph?...happy days Malc

[SherwoodCleaningSe]

Maybe the original price was for a builders clean.

[simon knight]

Maybe the original price was for a builders clean.

No. No buliding work done. Just an ordinary clean.

Basically the guys had her eyes out.

[JSMC]

110 to clean a house inside and out feckin robbery big time. I dont care what anyone says. To have windows cleaned in yer house that is scandalous. If any of us were not WC's would you be happy paying that to someone?

[actualcleaning]

There really are some ridiculous examples of prices floated around this forum....cloud cuckoo land some people live in :

[amayze]

Just goes to prove that until we properly regulate this (and most other parts of the cleaning) profession, there are going to be these cowboys giving us all a bad name.

[StanA]

I was this morning doing my little row of 2 up 2 down terraces (11 of them all in a line and I charge £10 a pop, front and back). Woman comes up to me and says: "I've just had my windows cleaned but could you pop over and tell tell me how much you'd charge".

Goes over and it's a fair bit bigger: 3 beds, 2 reception, kitchen, one bathroom, one downstairs loo and 4 veluxes. All very accessable. In and out 90 minutes if I was hungover and in lazy mode

ME: How much have you just been charged?
HER: £110...took the 2 of them about an hour.
 
ME: You've been shafted love...£40 with me.
HER: See you in 2 months time and every 2 months after please.

Result: Rip-off merchants £110....Simon Knight £240pa for as long as she lives there

OK, they did a fair job...but £110 for an hours work???

Question:  Is my attitude right?

It's not £110 for an hours work though.  It's £110 for two hours work - therefore £55 an hour.  Still quite a high rate mind you.  I can get to that sort of rate myself if I'm flying and on my better work.  It's just that it doesn't show up so much because it doesn't all come from one household.  When it's one household I try to moderate things somewhat.  Mind you I have a job I do for £65 and I've got that down to 1hr 20m.  It does have to be done while the customer is in though due to front security gates.

Anyway, back to the other guys.  £110 for two man hours is on the high side but there is no way of knowing how much they had to disrupt their schedule in order to do the job as it involved insides.  The disruption alone may have cost them half a man hour to get there.
Mind you, you did say it was 90 minutes for you alone so presumably they were taking the p and hanging it out in case they got hassled.
It does sound like they were taking the p a bit but maybe not as much as it first appears as we don't know all the circumstances.

[prestige cleaners]

sounds ok to me, i try and earn £60 phr. i wouldnt call them cowboys just cos there on more than you.

[martinsadie]

Hang on - she gets in and out done for a £110 and it takes two man-hours yeah?

If I've got that right they are earning £55ph each.

You are offering to do it for £40 and for two hours (those inside veluxes can be a bit more time consuming) you'd get £20 ph.

You reckon you can do it in 90 mins and so that's about £26.66 per hour.

If that is true I think (especially as you know their price) you could have prolly gone for £55 - half price and both of you would have been happy.

Sorry to rain (well drizzle a bit) on your parade.

not everybodys as greedy as you Malc 

[South Coast Cleaning Services]

110 to clean a house inside and out feckin robbery big time. I dont care what anyone says. To have windows cleaned in yer house that is scandalous. If any of us were not WC's would you be happy paying that to someone?

No I wouldnt but at the end of the day the woman excepted the quote...

sounds ok to me, i try and earn £60 phr. i wouldnt call them cowboys just cos there on more than you.

Couldnt agree more, some are cowboys when they quote too low now cowboys when quoting too high......

There really are some ridiculous examples of prices floated around this forum....cloud cuckoo land some people live in :

Why assume people live in cuckoo land....

[landy2]

i think you have done wrong here for two of them thats about right

[williamx]

Simon

You said you did 11 terraced houses at £10 a pop, how long did they take you?

[niceandclean]

I was this morning doing my little row of 2 up 2 down terraces (11 of them all in a line and I charge £10 a pop, front and back). Woman comes up to me and says: "I've just had my windows cleaned but could you pop over and tell tell me how much you'd charge".

Goes over and it's a fair bit bigger: 3 beds, 2 reception, kitchen, one bathroom, one downstairs loo and 4 veluxes. All very accessable. In and out 90 minutes if I was hungover and in lazy mode

ME: How much have you just been charged?
HER: £110...took the 2 of them about an hour.
 
ME: You've been shafted love...£40 with me.
HER: See you in 2 months time and every 2 months after please.

Result: Rip-off merchants £110....Simon Knight £240pa for as long as she lives there

OK, they did a fair job...but £110 for an hours work???

Question:  Is my attitude right?

What part of London do you work Simon?

[simon knight]

sounds ok to me, i try and earn £60 phr. i wouldnt call them cowboys just cos there on more than you.

I didn't call them cowboys, in fact I said they did a "fair job".

It's just that clearly to most people £110 for a 3 bed house is the "wrong" money (why else would the woman want a second opiniion?) and it doen't matter if there was "half a man hour to get there" (per StanA) as we all have to accept that it takes time to get from one job to the next.

Proof of the pudding is: They will in future earn nowt from this customer.
                                      I will earn £240 a year.
                                      QED

[simon knight]

Simon

You said you did 11 terraced houses at £10 a pop, how long did they take you?

2 hours(ish)

You're now gonna say: "So you're earning £55ph Simon"

True, but I'm not stinging one person for £110...there is a big difference!

[simon knight]

I was this morning doing my little row of 2 up 2 down terraces (11 of them all in a line and I charge £10 a pop, front and back). Woman comes up to me and says: "I've just had my windows cleaned but could you pop over and tell tell me how much you'd charge".

Goes over and it's a fair bit bigger: 3 beds, 2 reception, kitchen, one bathroom, one downstairs loo and 4 veluxes. All very accessable. In and out 90 minutes if I was hungover and in lazy mode

ME: How much have you just been charged?
HER: £110...took the 2 of them about an hour.
 
ME: You've been shafted love...£40 with me.
HER: See you in 2 months time and every 2 months after please.

Result: Rip-off merchants £110....Simon Knight £240pa for as long as she lives there

OK, they did a fair job...but £110 for an hours work???

Question:  Is my attitude right?

What part of London do you work Simon?

Putney