[Perfect Windows]

My theory of undercutting is that our subconscience defeats our subconscience whilst manipulating our persona.

My theory of undercutting is that people don't want to do work for less money than they think they should earn. 

So, most people seem to quote a price they are happy with.  If the customer accepts it, good.  If not, also good.

Vin

[SherwoodCleaningSe]

A friend of mine has told me today he has had to sell a round because it was being taken over by a guy charging £8 a month inside and out.

My view on undercutting is that many of us would do it but dont out of fear. Fear of reprisals or out of being shamed. We would happily take a commercial by undercutting as many perceive commercial to be more lucrative and there is less of a stigma on undercutting commercial then undercutting domestic.

The psychology of it is quite simple:
We all have three levels of personality. We have a persona which is our act the we project to the world. Our conscience and our sub conscience.

-We portray ourselves to the world through our persona - eg a man who may have had a death in his family and is devasted may tell everyone that he is fine, coping, getting over it or lost. This is a persons personality that we judge them on day to day. This is what we see and a general insight into their personality. We only see what they reveal.

-The conscience is our true feelings like the man in my example. He feels devastated. Our conscience also tells us the difference between right and wrong and what we use to make decisions.

-The subconscience is our underlying thoughts and what i refer to as instictive decisions. When people mention listening to their gut feeling they are really connecting to their subconscience.

My theory of undercutting is that our subconscience defeats our subconscience whilst manipulating our persona.

To put it simply our instincts(subconscience) have not evolved with time and still hold to prehistoric instincts of our ancestors from centuries ago. The hunter gather in us comes out. This is where our greed comes from-its our survival mechanism.
We have to have as much as we can to survive and our instincts take over. The window cleaners who undercut to get work i believe have little faith in themselves and their subconscience defeats their conscience(right from wrong) which is nature trying to survive.
Window cleaners who have the ability to price higher who have faith in themselves have a stronger conscience which defeats their subconscience allowing them to price higher on jobs.

Either way the persona or personality doesnt come into play if that makes sense. DONT TRUST ANYONE

Danny

DEEP MAN   

[Danny Guest]

My theory of undercutting is that our subconscience defeats our subconscience whilst manipulating our persona.

My theory of undercutting is that people don't want to do work for less money than they think they should earn. 

So, most people seem to quote a price they are happy with.  If the customer accepts it, good.  If not, also good.

Vin

Sorry that should say subconscience defeats our conscience - Its been corrected

[sf]

I never deliberately undercut,i may from time to time price cheaper by a pound or so always without knowing prices of other windies im competeing against.More often my price will be hgher by a pound or 2. Undercutting does nothing but devalue your business.I always price what i think im worth.As for customer loyalty look after your customers do a good job and youve got nothing to worry about with domestic.Dont think there is such a thing as loyalty with commercial, most will drop you if another windy others a cheaper price.No matter what the general opinion is of undercutting,undercutting will always exist in every trade.

[sgibsoncleaning]

these posts do make me giggle.
business is business.
find a happy medium in pricing and you wont lose customers.
too cheap and you have to skip out on quality tomake a living
too dear and you customer will leave at the first cheaper quote.
but this game has changed.
some people think that they can charge what they want and get annoyed when people realise they can do the job for less.
imagine you have a shop and your competition sell a pint of milk for 80p as they had no competition and people had to pay as they had no choice.
so you put a fridge in your shop and sell milk for 50p.  its business.
if you have the oppurtunity to earn 50 quid an hour then great go for it but dont be suprised if someone trys to get in on it. after all there is so much bragging on here any newbie is going to be tempted by talk of huge earnings.
as for undercutting if my price structure is different and i can do a job for less then i will do it. no one forced  the customer to change.

[barry mallett]

load of rubbish . i am the most expensive windy in the area , but ive been told im rubbish loads of times

[sgibsoncleaning]

load of rubbish . i am the most expensive windy in the area , but ive been told im rubbish loads of times

i have never been told that and would be very concerned if i had

[4Taz]

Having just visited my relatives in Redcar they have said that their is a massive contingent of Polish Window Cleaners doing the rounds. Average price has been £4 & the service is second to none. £8 includes the conny & roof.

As you say nothing to worry about but how do they live on that!

[4Taz]

Other areas like Yearby are even lower!

[GB Window Cleaning]

Having just visited my relatives in Redcar they have said that their is a massive contingent of Polish Window Cleaners doing the rounds. Average price has been £4 & the service is second to none. £8 includes the conny & roof.

As you say nothing to worry about but how do they live on that!

they probably are not paying tax and ni, thats how!

[H S and Son]

If that figure was altered to allow for tax and N.I then the charge would be about £11. It clearly isn't anything to do with that then as £11 is far too low anyway. They probably just haven't got a clue. There's so
many sweeping statements made on here where no-one actually has a shred of knowledge about what they're commenting on. I'm not saying they're paying tax Im saying there's far too many criteria that in this instance are going to affect the price. Most 25 year old Polish blokes are probably perfectly happy to earn £8 an hour, there's 6 or 8 in a house and by comparison to what they're used to are in clover.

[Alex Allen]

I don't believe that window cleaners have to be bad because their prices are low.

I am certain that there must be guys out there that are brilliant window cleaners, but don't know how much to charge.

John.

thats it's, most of it isn't even undercutting
good window cleaners who can't price, tend to undersell
and window cleaners who can price have competative pricing
that also gets mistaken for undercutting
why or how would you undercut if you can't price in the first place

if you do lose a job and its now done too cheap
more than likely it been priced by someone who doesn't know how to charge
and if you have work thats overpriced and lose it
it's more than likely to someone who can price competitive

if you think its all undercutting, you can't price
i bet there is less than 1% on here who have been undercut
but i bet everyone has come across at some point
the window cleaner who charges so little
he might as well get a job

[David Kent @ KentKleen]

they must be all undercover polish or work in the night 
We have some very reputable companies in redcar cleaning 3 bed semi's for £4.00 working out of 2 fairly new vans so the Polish want to watch out!!