[bennymon]

ive had 2 of my customers informing me over the last 2 days that a company has phoned them out of the blue offering to clean any 2 carpets for £8.99 .the company are from portsmouth but the people they called are in woking 40 odd miles away so the price wouldnt cover the fule. they also do 5 rooms for £21.99. have any of you ever seen cheaper.  

[Joe H]

Ring them up, book em, find out what the bill was, then tell us all about it.

[jasonl]

The company you speak of is called Enterprise cleaning of Ferndown near Bournemouth, they have at least 20 vans now ,and a call centre with girls phoning with the 8.99 offer .

I wanted to know more so I applied to work there, Ian the GM told me that "your sales skills and personality persuades the customer that they need stain removal, deodorizing,protection and other services"  You get a van, prochem machine and no training for 140 /week .. you give the company 40%  of your takings .

[Joe H]

Its obvious you have to upsell.
but Jason, is the basic wage £140, then you get what upsell less 40% goes to the business.

[jasonl]

It is self employed , no basic wage , you get to rent the van and machine from them for 140/week.


I told him this was not legal or ethical and they would get shut down, he was very cocky and arrogant ,and said they had been running a year and would be nationwide soon .

The office is 2 mins from my house , I shall go and take a photo of all the vans in the morning and put it up here , shall park my van next to them all .

[Joe H]

Ah right, so you pay them £140 per week. Got it.

So if they dont feed you jobs then you have well and truly lost out.

but if you turnedover £800 a week, then you give them 40% which leaves you with £480, less the £140 for the van - so you get £340

I would rather turn over £800 per week and find my own way.

[jasonl]

Most guys do 1500-2k a week , not hard when you are getting 200 plus to clean a through lounge from an old dear , it wont be long until they are shut down I reckon

[JandS]

Would feel awful to know I had earned 2K for the
week only to hand them £940 back.

John

[MAX Carpets]

They are expandig very quickly, now have over 50 vans! They now have a depot in Reading and are opening in Bristol soon!

[DanielWelford]

If you search for them on google maps, there are some really bad reviews, so I dont they will last.

Dan

[robert meldrum]

Well I reckon Mr Arrogant has a b*****y good business model which according to those figures is giving him around £14,500 a week ...................Sure it's unethical and could be taken to court by trading standards but how long will that take and how much will he have salted away by then ?

When other people are charging as much it might be pretty hard to prove they're cheating the public there's a precedent for charging high prices.

Yes I know the circumstances are different............but, there are NO NATIONAL STANDARDS in this UNREGULATED BUSINESS and you can charge what you like.

I remember all of the training courses / seminars I attended years ago suggesting we should ALWAYS UPSELL and potentially DOUBLE OUR TICKET....................is that so different.

I thought it was unethical and never did it .................DID YOU, OR YOU ?

[iain.t]

And they don't move furniture unless 'asked' to according to ther flyer, had a customer thru lounge diner went from £9 to £350 with stainguard, she haggled down to £200, in & out 45mins no furniture moved and very few stains removed, there supposed to have trading standards breathing down there necks in Portsmouth, Brighton area.

[Colin Day]

I agree Robert, it's not the way I would personally do business, but this fella isn't as daft as some of us think, and he's earning a hell of a lot more than I am!

[robert meldrum]

Yep..................I'm  certainly not condoning his style but you run a business to make money and it's a lot easier to make money by being SMART which is what this guy is being.

Being HONEST and DECENT has STOPPED me having the high earnings of a few others I know in this industry and I often wish I had been a lot more BRASS NECKED over the years

[MAX Carpets]

I know some of there operators come on here (Dont worry, I wont name you) The machines they use are not Prochem, but imported crap from China. However the operator I know of has at least done the right thing and brought himself a Powerflight, hes a nice guy too.

[MAX Carpets]

Most of there advertising is tele-sales, this suprises me as when we have gone into tele-sales its always been useless, but then we do ot offer £8.99!

[jasonl]

They only had prochem machines in thier offices , ill call in soon and have another look.

[Steve. Taylor]

Jas your spot on there i spoke to one of there cleaners about 2 weeks ago he was using a old ninja i asked him the psi on it he looked at me like i was from mars got talking he was trained by the guy that was leaving 3 day course

Customer called for the 3 room deal £21.99

He upsold the cleaning to £380 pre spray extra stain removal extra deodoriser you guest it extra stain protection.

lounge/dinner + hsl

ALSO SAID TO ME HOW HE HAD A NIGHTMARE YESTERDAY TURNED SOMEONES SOFA A FUNNY COLOUR

[Colin Day]

I bet Mark Alwright will be on to this

[Carpet Dawg]

I think its a good business model!... But obviously they are going about it totaly unethical and by the sounds of it, extremly lazy!

The CEO's only concern seems to be to scale up at all costs, not giving a flying ...... for customer service, quality etc and hopefully it'll turn round and bite him on the bum soon!

If he provided  proper training to his staff, kitted them out with proper gear and clean vans etc and didn't blantantly lie about thier prices and upsell so ridiculously!! Then you cant really complain but applaud....

Tony