[nathankaye]

My brother in law has recently got involved in window cleaning, helping a family member on his partners sides.
Today i went with him to one of his customers houses (about buying his car) and we got talking prices. I was gob smacked. This house is a semi, 3 bed. Old wooden georgian windows at front and a good size conservatory at rear. I said i would charge 18/20 for that. He nearly choked! Asked how much they were paying...........are you ready for this..............u sure..........
£4!!

[JandS]

I was once asked by another window cleaner if I would do some of his round a couple of times to keep up with them while he was out of action for roughly 4 months.
I picked a section of his round near me around £240 worth and he printed off the houses and prices for me.
Thought there's a lot here for that price and so there was.......was earning around a tenner an hour...........and I refused to do 6 of them as they were huge and priced at a fiver...one of them would have taken me over an hour.
Did them once then made my excuses.

[*Hector*]

have you given up the rug munching John? or licking windows as well?

[dazmond]

some guys are charging £6 for 4 bed houses round here!

unbelievable in this day and age.

[richard groves]

Just to flip this..............
Last week a walk up asked me for a regular quote ( was opposite two regular terrace fronts I already do ).
Simple enough job - terraced 2 bays on front plus 3rd floor attic window and patio doors at rear plus two sash and a small toilet window and gf kitchen window. Reckon on under 30 mins work probably more like 20 mins on a regular. I quoted £20. Her previous quote was £60 

[JandS]

No Hector still rug munching.
Got offered the round in the area round my house 3 years ago and took it.
It enabled me to cut right back on advertising the carpet cleaning and also offered an alternative when jobs cancelled at the last moment.
I now try and do 3 days carpet cleaning and 2 on windows although it never works that way....usually a week or so behind on windies especially in Winter but customers don't mind.
Bought WFP set up in June and it has transformed that side of the business and tbh I actually enjoy being outside.
Thinking of going commercial only on the carpets and taking on more windows....just need to find a way of getting more commercial.

[*Hector*]

Fair play mate...
If I had to start again, I would do window licking, once the round is sorted, that is the end of the advertising costs..

As for commercial, apart from going round and offering a demo to the Boss, I can't help you.

[Stoots]

not really hector, thats what i thought but its a constant hassle to chase payments and having to sump customers and find new ones, its not as easy as get a full round and done, its constantly evolving.

I do a mixtire of things and find it works better, windows is regular but carpet etc help with cash flow

[dazmond]

not really hector, thats what i thought but its a constant hassle to chase payments and having to sump customers and find new ones, its not as easy as get a full round and done, its constantly evolving.

I do a mixtire of things and find it works better, windows is regular but carpet etc help with cash flow

it just depends on the round.my cashflow is very,very good as lots of customers pay on the day(cash or cheque) or within 14 days via BACS."rolling debt" also means some customers are paying 2 or 3 cleans etc.

even though my debtlist is rarely below £500 the cashflow is good day to day generally.

[duncan h]

Lost quite a few customers after they watched how quick I clean the windows for £10. I think they were expecting it to take longer then trad as I clean doors frames and garage doors also. They were wrong. I try to stop cleaning when they are in during kids holidays now

[nathankaye]

Because my work is residential and every 4wks, i sell my service on the quality of the work. Apart from likes of bird mess n severe sand storms etc, you will now have clean windows until my next visit to maintain the quality of service. When they ask about the filter water, trump it up so they know the effort (expense of your equipment) that goes on behind the scenes that enable us to do such an efficient clean when we come.

On different but sane note; when i was trad working, i had a stretch of bungalows to do. One customer always came out to check the sills n windows when i was on the next bungalow. The reason......i cleaned them really fast (mopping one window whilst blading the next), too fast for them to be cleaned properly in her opinion. Yet time and time again, i would ask her if shes found any fault. She never did, but she never tired of doing it. Think it became a challenge for her...

[the king]

i picked up a job turns out it was one of my m8s lol any way it was blady high 1 top huge bay and another below  4 more top windows and 2 doors 1 set of french doors and 2 small windows he charged £8  i went in at £17 and got the job he is also trad ive cleaned it now must be 7 cleans she is very happy as i clean all the fraims not half lol like he used to do when i found out it was one of his jobs i told him my price he was gob smacked how high i went in at 

[Smurf]

I'm not supprised at all as happens to me quite a bit being more expensive than most.
As the saying goes "If you don't ask you don't get" and all that.

For example I did a small gutter clearing  job today worth  £120 that took 1.5 hours total.  You know me I'm slow and take my time including setting up, one cuppa, packing away and getting the owner to get their cat off me van roof before leaving.

The last guy charged £40 using ladders and did not do them very well apparently. 
"You get what you pay for" was my answer to that one. I also did not drive off with their cat...bloody cats 

[Stoots]

not really hector, thats what i thought but its a constant hassle to chase payments and having to sump customers and find new ones, its not as easy as get a full round and done, its constantly evolving.

I do a mixtire of things and find it works better, windows is regular but carpet etc help with cash flow

it just depends on the round.my cashflow is very,very good as lots of customers pay on the day(cash or cheque) or within 14 days via BACS."rolling debt" also means some customers are paying 2 or 3 cleans etc.

even though my debtlist is rarely below £500 the cashflow is good day to day generally.

you are probably right mate, im still in the process of building my round so still going through the motions of weeding out bad payers and chasing debts, all my payments are online also and my rolling debt is around 300 (but turnover is probably no where near yours as i "only" have around 170 customers). It will probably settle down in future just at the moment the bigger one off jobs with a lump payment keep me ticking over.

[SeanK]

I'm not supprised at all as happens to me quite a bit being more expensive than most.
As the saying goes "If you don't ask you don't get" and all that.

For example I did a small gutter clearing  job today worth  £120 that took 1.5 hours total.  You know me I'm slow and take my time including setting up, one cuppa, packing away and getting the owner to get their cat off me van roof before leaving.

The last guy charged £40 using ladders and did not do them very well apparently. 
"You get what you pay for" was my answer to that one. I also did not drive off with their cat...bloody cats 

The thing is if the guy had cleaned them well you would be in trouble, plus what sort of moron would you need to be not
to be able to do a passable job cleaning a gutter.
I do laugh at how some like to big this job up though.

[8weekly]

I'm not supprised at all as happens to me quite a bit being more expensive than most.
As the saying goes "If you don't ask you don't get" and all that.

For example I did a small gutter clearing  job today worth  £120 that took 1.5 hours total.  You know me I'm slow and take my time including setting up, one cuppa, packing away and getting the owner to get their cat off me van roof before leaving.

The last guy charged £40 using ladders and did not do them very well apparently. 
"You get what you pay for" was my answer to that one. I also did not drive off with their cat...bloody cats 

The thing is if the guy had cleaned them well you would be in trouble, plus what sort of moron would you need to be not
to be able to do a passable job cleaning a gutter.
I do laugh at how some like to big this job up though.

There's lots of window cleaners that don't need customers to not value their work as they don't value it themselves.

[Smurf]

I'm not supprised at all as happens to me quite a bit being more expensive than most.
As the saying goes "If you don't ask you don't get" and all that.

For example I did a small gutter clearing  job today worth  £120 that took 1.5 hours total.  You know me I'm slow and take my time including setting up, one cuppa, packing away and getting the owner to get their cat off me van roof before leaving.

The last guy charged £40 using ladders and did not do them very well apparently. 
"You get what you pay for" was my answer to that one. I also did not drive off with their cat...bloody cats 

The thing is if the guy had cleaned them well you would be in trouble, plus what sort of moron would you need to be not
to be able to do a passable job cleaning a gutter.
I do laugh at how some like to big this job up though.

I think it was more to do with the customer not feeling comfortable watching the chap struggling to reach into the gutters to clear them safely and properly. Then leaving 3 downspouts still blocked to boot so the job he did was in effect a total waste of time.
Like you say any numpty with a ladder can try clearing gutters but it's not as easy as people think it is especially on awkward ones.

What cleaners charge is down to them but funny how most people are willing to pay more all the same don't you think? 
Regards to big the job up its bloody dangerous to do roofline work from ladders. You would have to be a real moron to think otherwise.

[SeanK]

I'm not supprised at all as happens to me quite a bit being more expensive than most.
As the saying goes "If you don't ask you don't get" and all that.

For example I did a small gutter clearing  job today worth  £120 that took 1.5 hours total.  You know me I'm slow and take my time including setting up, one cuppa, packing away and getting the owner to get their cat off me van roof before leaving.

The last guy charged £40 using ladders and did not do them very well apparently. 
"You get what you pay for" was my answer to that one. I also did not drive off with their cat...bloody cats 

The thing is if the guy had cleaned them well you would be in trouble, plus what sort of moron would you need to be not
to be able to do a passable job cleaning a gutter.
I do laugh at how some like to big this job up though.

I think it was more to do with the customer not feeling comfortable watching the chap struggling to reach into the gutters to clear them safely and properly. Then leaving 3 downspouts still blocked to boot so the job he did was in effect a total waste of time.
Like you say any numpty with a ladder can try clearing gutters but it's not as easy as people think it is especially on awkward ones.

What cleaners charge is down to them but funny how most people are willing to pay more all the same don't you think? 
Regards to big the job up its bloody dangerous to do roofline work from ladders. You would have to be a real moron to think otherwise.

There are plenty of reasons why people will pay more, usually they don't have a choice, that said I must remind the ladder using
gutters cleaners in my area that they are risking their lives and should clear off leaving me with my gutter vac to charge what I like.

[SeanK]

I'm not supprised at all as happens to me quite a bit being more expensive than most.
As the saying goes "If you don't ask you don't get" and all that.

For example I did a small gutter clearing  job today worth  £120 that took 1.5 hours total.  You know me I'm slow and take my time including setting up, one cuppa, packing away and getting the owner to get their cat off me van roof before leaving.

The last guy charged £40 using ladders and did not do them very well apparently. 
"You get what you pay for" was my answer to that one. I also did not drive off with their cat...bloody cats 

The thing is if the guy had cleaned them well you would be in trouble, plus what sort of moron would you need to be not
to be able to do a passable job cleaning a gutter.
I do laugh at how some like to big this job up though.

There's lots of window cleaners that don't need customers to not value their work as they don't value it themselves.

I'm an excellent window cleaner and know it, that said I live in a town that has many excellent window cleaners and customers
who seem to know what they need to pay to get the service of one of these excellent window cleaners.
That said there's still a good living to be had as there's a least one guy who's become a millionaire running a window cleaning
business, thing is because of him it would be impossible for anybody else to do the same as he does a decent job at a competitive
price and as his round is massive it also gets him a lot of recommendations.
But cant complain its just part of the fun that us guys in the real world have to deal with. lol.

[Smurf]

I'm sure you are an excellent window cleaner. Likewise I offer an excellent gutter clearing service so tend to charge higher than most in my area. I also have no issues gaining profitable new work, referrals, repeat custom by charging more.

I take no notice of what others want to charge so maybe you should start doing the same?