[gwrightson]

Priced a job around 3 weeks ago for a company wanting office carpets cleaned at one of their clients offices.
Here is a mail I received today , copied and pasted.

Geoff
Thanks for the quote regards carpet cleaning works at **** ***** that you went to look at about a couple of weeks ago, however the client has decided that they will take on these works themselves so there will be no further action on this.

 

Regards

 

Kevin Griffin
Project Coordinator

The ironic thing is the company themselves contacted me directly last week wanting them cleaned on the Saturday, could I accommodate them?
 Not sure What I had quoted them as the paper work was at home, I asked what did I quote ?  The reply was £565.00 , yes, no problem will fit it in I replied
Once home, I checked my paper work , the price I had actually given was £450 .00  so  my customer was making £115.00 , no wonder they declined, I know percentages are added in these situations but seem a fair wack  

Now all seems fine, I have made more than my first quote even after discounting the £65.00 for payment upon completion..
Herein lies the dilemma, do I inform the company whose carpets I cleaned telling them my price was actually cheaper? knowing their is potentially 1,000, of sq yards to clean.
Your opinions please.
Geoff.
ps. I do believe either somebody else had attempted to clean before I , either the original company having a go themselves or somebody cheaper and making a balls of it.

 

[from edge2edge]

Geoff take the £565....................Alan(Swindon)

[Elfyn]

Rental agents do the same thing. 

[gwrightson]

Rental agents do the same thing. 

Elfyn,
I agree they do , I only do work for 2 agents , both never quibble with my quote ,I give both 10% off my quote, I explain potential problems they don't expect miracles unlike some I have had the opportunity to do work for but since declined and most importantly they pay within a month.

The point how ever I am trying to make is, I was contacted directly by the company wanting the carpets cleaned, not through the agent, which after receiving the email telling me my quote was declined, which was today , and I had already done the work this Saturday just gone.
Geoff

[Dennis]

Have I got this right? You got £500 paid to you Saturday, £50 more than you thought, the customer saved £65 and presumably got a job they are happy with, at a price they are happy with, so why would they not give you more work? The middleman got nothing for doing practically nothing. Sounds all good to me. 

[gwrightson]

Have I got this right? You got £500 paid to you Saturday, £50 more than you thought, the customer saved £65 and presumably got a job they are happy with, at a price they are happy with, so why would they not give you more work? The middleman got nothing for doing practically nothing. Sounds all good to me. 

In a nut shell yes Dennis,
But my price was not £500 it was less originally .
I only realised when I checked my sent mail with the quote, so in my opinion 2 factors come in to play.
1 , I feel as though I should let them know my price was originally cheaper  than they was told , not because of my conscience , but because I do not want them thinking I was ripping them off if they discovered  what the quote really was.
2. If I do tell them, then they may well come directly too me in the future with any more work, I know many will say their are no loyalties, but I feel if they know I have been upfront with them then I may well be the first person they call.

Who knows?      I may well be wrong .
Geoff

[Kev Martin]

Bigger figures but the same thing.  A couple  of years ago we lost a job worth close to £??k through greed.  I contacted the consultant architect some weeks after hearing nothing and asked him why I had not heard from him when he had 99% told me we had the job.  His reply was I told you it had to come in at under £??k to which I replied it was just short of £8k less than that.  There was a moment of silence and he then disclosed it had come in at over £??k more.  In effect 2 sub contractors and a main contractor had added close to 74% on to my original quote.  That was the point I decided that I would never quote again to any agent, sub, or sub sub contractor.  I now only quote through main contractors with crystal clear honesty on their commission % disclosure  beforehand. 

[gwrightson]

Thanks Kevin,

Made my mind up , 

I will tell them , I'm certain I was going too anyway , and  will feel much better anyway.

geoff

[Doctor Carpet (Ret'd)]

A story with similar circumstances....

I was called out to quote for a simple stain removal. Having given the price they decided to simply let me get on with the job rather than mess around getting further quotes and then calling back the chosen company to remove the stain.

On the back of this I then did quite a lot of work for this cleaning company in offices where they were contracted to clean and some of the jobs were really quite big running into the thousands of pounds.

My biggest complaint was that I had to provide my quote to the cleaning company( the agent)-I was not allowed to talk to the managers/owners of the offices where I would be cleaning. My agent insisted that if say my quote was for £800 they would only be adding say a further £60 to the bill for the introduction. I then add to invoice the agent, not the client.

I really didn't like this set up firstly because I could never believe if it was true or not that my agent was only adding a minimal amount to my quote.

Secondly, I had always made it clear that if I could negotiate directly with the client I would be more than happy to pay a higher level of commission than what my agent claimed they were only adding.

Finally, I had no idea as to whether my properly constructed quote was ever seen my the client or whether the agent merely told the client that the cost of carpet cleaning was £x. With no explanation.

We all know that if we can talk directly to the client we will have a far better idea of their expectations and it gives us a chance to sell ourselves and our levels of experience and to cover the limitations of the job. So of course it was sometimes the case that I was told by the agent that I would have to reduce my price of lose the job.

Things finally came to a head on a job that I had already done for two years. On the third year, again with no price increase I was dropped from future work simply because by rather than doing the job by myself and taking 25 hours to do it I employed 4 helpers and was able to get the job done in 5 hours.  The agent decided that me as the owner of the carpet cleaning had made an excessive profit per hour!

ON balance I'm glad I don't work for that agent any more. But in summary it was the not knowing, and not being in control of my own work flow that really annoyed me.

Rog

[gwrightson]

Good post doctor carpet.

I too like to deal directly, imo more likely to get the job dealing with the guy who makes the final decision .

On a  good note < I talked with the company this morning explaining what had happened , and the final price was in fact cheaper.
He appreciated my call, and after I asked him to consider myself and deal directly with me in any possible  future work he obliged by asking me to put a maintenance plan    together based on every 3 months.

I wait and see the outcome .
geoff

[Simon@arenaclean]

Gut Instinct, always trust it myself and most times if I trust it I  get the result I would prefer in the long run.