[John Gregory]

Colin, what part of Beverly Hills do you live in £ 183.06p sounds a lot for cleaning a  28ft x 12ft carpet ?

[Chris R]

I can see a few things that others do to make the job faster.

I nearly always move TVs, and so that I dont mess up the wires I will usually use a hand tool to clean behind them.

If the customer is going out for the day I will leave some furniture in the kitchen and tell them to put them back later ( dining chairs).

But if they are staying at home I will put MOST of the furniture back and put tabs under the legs.

This would include dining chairs etc.

I tell customers that if they want units moving they MUST be empty, or I will just clean up to them. About 30% seem to empty the units.

I am NOT SAYING that the way I work is better than anyone elses way, but this explains the difference in job time ?

I can  do the 30ft L/D  + HSL in 2hrs, but not always.

So when booking a job like that in, (without having already seen it ), I would allow 2 hrs 30 min to 3hrs before my next job.

Also I never seem to feel that one (wet) pass of the wand is enough on the main traffic area, and would always do at least two passes.

regards

Chris Slow

ps  I would charge £130 for the job.
I use a T/M

[Chris R]

So next you Lads will be telling me that when you clean a bedroom carpet you DONT move the sets of drawers / dressing table / Bed ?

 

[davep]

Is one or two dry passes enough?  Maybe this is down to the extra power of the TM's mentioned on here..  I use a porty and try to do as many dry passes as poss, after all that is the part that is removing the dirt?   

I have had a lot of oaps recently and they dont half slow me down with chatting. . . 

[carpetguy]

Chris

Make your mind up...............one minute your saying you're there to clean, not to move furniture................then you're saying the opposite.

Your wand technique, will be dependent on your preparation, that is whether the carpets were vacuumed, whether a prespray was used, what products you use and whether you use them correctly.

Also, of course, the machine being used and the operators ability to get the maximum performance from the system, they're using.

Dave

The number of dry passes will depend on ................how much water you apply, chemical used, whether hot, or not, how well you aggitate and obviously the machine.

Remember..............dry passes will clog your filters and could greatly decrease machine performance

How many do you reckon get the best possible result, from their equipment.............I'd venture to suggest, around 20%.

Carpet wands are referred to, in some adverts, as scrubbing wands and that's exactly how some use them, but good technique will usually get a better result and with less effort.

Although I could probably complete the above job in around an hour, it could, as sometimes happens, take double that time.

Personally............I always move what I regard as " easily moved " furniture and beds and find the vast majority of clients to be perfectly reasonable in their expectations.

[chrisg]

Chris, if your on a good price, take your time do a good job, not saying i know better or anything, we all do a bit different.

i too do several pass's in soiled areas, in fact i do the chop stroke, back and forth

Carpet guy dont confuse the two Chris's

[Chris R]

Chris

Make your mind up...............one minute your saying you're there to clean, not to move furniture................then you're saying the opposite.

Carpetguy,

You are mixing up the postings from me ( Chris R) and Chrisg 

( I was going to make an OAP joke, but decided against it  )

[mark_roberts]

Ive often wondered if I told the customer I'll move the suite only and then charge £1 per item for every other piece of furniture moved how much furniture would be left to move.

Moving furniture takes up more time than you think as does vacuuming which IMO needs to be done esp on wool carpets unless the customer has an upright vacuum and is willing to spend the time doing it correctly.

Stains will also take up more time.

Mark

[carpetguy]

Chris ?

What's an OAP?

[brights cleaning]

mr Gregory 339 sf at 54p per square foot = £183.06
if you think that is a lot then perhaps you dont charge enough
i have invested a lot of time,money,training,marketing and knowhow into my business so the clients i attract, get great value and serviseand are always happy, and always more than happy to pay.

[John Gregory]

Im not knocking it colin just wish i could get on Friday i quoted a 12x12 lounge at 33p per square foot £47.50p , the bloke kicked me out the house

[Chris R]

Hi john,
The only problem with forums like this is that a lot of guys will say that they charge really high prices ( and they do) but they forget to mention that they have gradually increased prices over the years.

They did not all start off in business charging these prices.

Unfortunately it gives newbies the impression that you can start off from nothing and charge big money.

You need to build up a good client base first.

For example over the last 5 yrs I have increased my prices by about 10 % per year,  and I am still a bit cheaper than you !

I would suggest that the best way to go is to have a high list price, but offer discounts on this from time to time ( when trade is very quite).

Charge full price at the busy times.

I have a database of about 3000 previous customers. This is the backbone of my business and gives me the confidence to increase my prices even more.

I no longer have to advertise.

Offer the odd £10 discount to secure the job for new customers. This may well then be a customer for life.

regards

Chris

[chrisg]

******I no longer have to advertise.********

Thats a very rare positon, well done, i would keep doing what your doing in that case, do you mail your database Chris?

[steve k]

John...your oneliners are like the desert...very dry...

[paul wright]

 80 pounds, 40-60 mins max
and i only move the 3pc, anything else the custy has to move it them selfs or i go up to it,  and never never touch elecy stuff like tv etc

[clive]

1.5 hrs. £130 ish.

Clive

[Liahona]

Peoples different charges will always cause a lot of comments and from me too as I dont think on the average carpet cleaners charge enough for what they do.

In my experiences of cleaning carpets when I was learning I felt that most people did two things essentially damaging to their business.

1) They went in too cheep

2) and most important, because of number 1 they had to be quick so as to get to the next "cheep" job.

With this in mind I felt I would be better rewarded by not going in so cheep and accordingly would be able to spend more time at the job and therefore give a better service.  Most customers will pay for a better service I just think on the whole we as cleaners dont offer a better service. 

I am not saying that we dont clean well, not at all.  What I am suggesting is that in most cases we could do a better service.

An open question.  Ask yourself if there was any thing you could have done differently to your last customer that could have given you the opportunity to have given a better service and accordingly have charged them more.

I would guess that there was and that we could therefor all charge a little bit more. 

A post was mentioned above about too much monies being charged for a small amount of carpet being cleaned.  For the same amount of carpet I would want to get twice what was already moaned about..

So there are 3 things to look at.

1) Too cheep

2) A good price at a liitle over 50p a square foot

3) The stupid amount that I charge.

My point is, all the prices above are all correct for the person doing the work.

The difference will be the services provided.

All 3 might well do the same job, I just dont think so.  If person number 1 does the job I dont see how they would be able to afford the right amount of time to be better than another company doing the same thing who can now spend twice the time to get hopfully a better result.

Hope this makes some sort of sense.  Best, Dave.

P.S. When I clean, apart from anything with a flat bottom and some electronics I move everything.  I cleaned a property a few months ago that had 53 items of furniture to move in just one room.  Had I charged 50p or even 70p a square foot I would have been doing an injustice to myself.  There are those, item number 1) that would have charged less than 35p and still have made a decent amount of money as it was 2000 square feet but I feel by moving everything is a better service.  The same result would have been achieved, a clean carpet but by moving all the furniture a better service was offered and paid for.