[BSF]

Do you remember the trooping of the colour, when that clown shot the starting pistol and a jock guard decked him and held a bayonet  to his throat  

I hope it wasnt you George it wasnt a bayonet, it was the stair attachment off his Nilco

[Phoenix]

What the hell has all these posts to do with OFFICE CLEANING RATES?  This Chitchat should be posted in another sections of this forum!!!

[Phoenix]

And Oh, I dont miss the green kit one little bit after 24 years service. Why dont you two get together at your nearest British legion Club, pull up a couple of sand bags and "swing the light"!!!!

[Art]

Sorry phoenix, your right i've deleted all mine 

[Prestige1]

Oh! I wanted to know who saved our Queen when the gun went off!! Kind regards Phil

[garyj]

So did I, I thought we were going to find out last night.

Surely it couldn't possibly be our very own Arthur SNA could it 


One minute saving The Queen, the next being reprimanded for talking in the wrong section, funny old world init.

[Art]

Phil, Gary, sorry i can't disclose any more about that incident with  HRH, but it wasn't me 

[Prestige1]

If it was,nt you who saved her, was it you that pulled the trgger?
Ps. fisrt one to guess what flag I am flying gets 10 house points!!!

[Robert Parry]

I find it interesting that you let your client/prospect tell you how many hours they want you to clean their premises, surely you are supposed to be the professional? We approach this type of client/prospect by asking them how clean they want their building to be, we then base our quote on that and other factors.
It is very unlikely, that your client/prospect would have enough knowledge to be able to prepare a real cleaning specification, unless the building warranted a qualified/experienced full time FM.
Regarding the hourly charge, if you add on the real costs of doing business, holiday pay, sick pay, pension payments, insurance, payroll expenses etc, etc, i don't think £10.00 per hour would cut it.
At the end of the day, it is the industries duty to inform and educate our clients in the real costs involved in maintaining their premises to the standards that they themselves set.

[Kingfisher-CCS]

I agree I quoted for my first job the other day, the owner and his wife used to do the cleaning when they could be bothered.

The bloke took me in his office and said, 'so you're a cleaning company? How much will it cost then?' I just smiled and told him I'd have to look around first as I'd only seen the reception and his office. He then told me it would take me an hour.....how much would that be?

I said it depends on what there is, toilets, kitchen I dunno

He eventually told me to look around and come back to his office.

So I had to find my way around and take notes, then realised it would take 2 hrs, but he still thought 1 hour!

I quoted for 1.5hrs per night at a ridiculously low £8.50 an hour!! He nearly snapped my arm off!

I charged that low as I'm used to working min wage, but I'm not gonna price that low again, he was lucky, I'll live n learn

[wow, nearly wrote an essay!]

Paul

[*Chris Browne]

£8.50!!!jeeez, can you make anything on that??


chris

[Mr BSF]

Any company would bite your arm off at £8.50 ph for 7 and a half hours a week, I think we are now on the border of bickering about charges again

I will try and put my point across with out trying to sound mad or make out that I know everything, because i'm not mad and I dont know everything.

If I was selling 25 litres of toilet cleaner to a small cleaning business, I would charge him accordingly, because he is only buying a small amount I would want to make a good profit to make it worth my while.

If a large cleaning company approached me wanting to buy my fantastic toilet cleaner, in amounts of say 1000 litres a week, I can afford to sell them a lot cheaper, I could even offer them free delivery, I would even put their name on the bottle.

I have made a lot of mistakes relating to charging in this business, I have learnt the hard way, I consistently over quoted on large contracts when we started, hence I threw the work away, I refused to lower my profit margin because only making a quid an hour didn’t seem viable, my attitude was stuff them I hope they get a poor service, big contracts are very hesitant to change supplier especially if it costs them more, the only way to get them is to offer a better service for an equal or cheaper price.

I totally agree the basic principal is to charge what you can get away with or what you are happy to do it for, but always remember 12 months down the line there is always someone out there wanting your contract, they will do it cheaper than you.

Large customers want the job doing for the lowest price possible, its ok saying I’m giving cleaning a bad name, ok in the ideal world I want to charge £10 an hour for a 50 hr contract, but if I realistically want that contract, I can’t, why let someone else get it.

What I can say to put it in simple terms:

A young aspiring footballer gets the chance of a lifetime to play at a premiership football club, he plays in the reserves for a few seasons then gets his place on the team, he plays well for the next couple of seasons…..

Hey presto all the premiership clubs want him to play for them.

Its all about getting your foot in the door with big customers, when you do the worlds your oyster.

Regards

BSF  

[need a cleaner]

Well done BSF :Dyou manage to restrain your self

[Kingfisher-CCS]

I clean a place just over the road after I've been to the £8.50 an hr one and I use the absolute minimum cleaning materials there. So it's not too bad  HOWEVER, I am getting a bit peeved when I think I've set myself up for working for a poor price for the next 12 months!

I wont charge low like that again, I may aswel work for someone else £5.05/hr and have no worries

[Kingfisher-CCS]

They only wanted 3hrs/wk (2 nights), it was filthy at first but I'm getting it up to a decent standard. And it appears to stay fairly clean. So hopefully the client may be nice and say I can go once I've done

Or I'll try and staff it, but the person would need transport, blah blah

[bscleaning]

Hi, am new to this business and thought that domestic rate would be less then office cleaning rates, can anyone give me some information,  our clients are of good income, if you know what i mean! Thank you.

[Sarah S & P Cleaning]

Hi,
I charge from £10.50- per hr up to £12.00- per hr per cleaner on office contract and have no problem recieving this rate.
Domestics i dont handle any more but i used to charge £25 per 1 1/2 hr for 2 cleaners and £32 for a 2 hr clean.
With all stock, expenses, insurances etc it would hard work to make a living in office work for any less.
    

[Mr BSF]

Hi,
I charge from £10.50- per hr up to £12.00- per hr per cleaner on office contract and have no problem recieving this rate.
Domestics i dont handle any more but i used to charge £25 per 1 1/2 hr for 2 cleaners and £32 for a 2 hr clean.
With all stock, expenses, insurances etc it would hard work to make a living in office work for any less.
    

Hi Sarah,

If you quoted on a contract in excess of 30 hrs p/w your hourly charge would have to come down to get the contract.

regards

BSF

[mk1]

what an interesting read this lot is  just quoting for a 35hrs a week office cleaning contract 4 cleaners at 2 locations 200 yards apart.......which side of the fence do i go £10.00 or £15.00 

[Suehuitt]

Hi there i have multiple contracts now thanks to hard work and I have now increased my price with all my  contracts to £15 per hour, they seem to be happy with that, when you take into consideration wages, NI Holiday pay, insurance materials its about average price