[Londoner]

A very similar thread has been running recently on the carpet cleaning forum of Cleanitup under the heading of "Its getting harder".

We are far from alone in seeing certain trends forming, in fact the carpet cleaners seem to be further down that road than we are.

The trouble is there is a growing army of displaced people who are unable to find work in their chosen industry because of redundancy and cutbacks.

Window cleaning and carpet cleaning are ideal fallbacks for these people and if their need is for ready cash they don't care too much about pricing structure etc. A tenner in the hand is what they are interested in.

[groundhog]

There will be a time in the not too distant future when some of us will need to re-evaluate this psudeo 'honour amongst w/c' code'.

Business is business and time will change the way we will have to operate to survive.  A sad fact and I for one hope that it occurs later rather than sooner.

Dave.

This could cause many window cleaner wars!!! I had it happen to me when I first started a part time round many years ago, I canvassed and got many customers that were being cleaned by another window cleaner. I was threatened and attacked on several occassions, which included him jumping over a customers garden fence, kicking over my bucket and wildly throwing punches at me!!! Luckily I could handle myself a bit, and I didn't get hurt. I have also seen a similar thing happen when 2 ice cream vans start operating on the same patch!! Things can get very nasty!!!