[dg-cleaning]

Xxxx

[Art]

How did you get to £270 for both houses as that seems way to low?

If you drop your prices to £8 you'll probably get flooded with work and then your going to have problems getting good staff, paying them a decent rate and still making a profit

[DREAM CLEAN]

well £270 for the first house i think
£120 for the flat
total £390 thats more like it hey?

[wilclean]

Hi

   I think the £35 registration fee wont go down well with your new customers and might see it to be a little bit of a rip off even though after three months they'll get it back. you might have to go back and re-think your pricing structure as not many people are going to go for it.


                                    kond regards Paul

[wilclean]

I had an unusual email requesting prices for tons of different jobs from the same email addy and I wonder whether someone in area is trying to undercut...and succeeding!


Hi

   Could you please e-mail the addy that was e-mailing you so that I dont get suckered aswell.

                                             kind regards Paul

[dg-cleaning]

are u poaching my clients paul????lol

[wilclean]

aarrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhh are you poaching my clients thats the question?


                                                kind regards Paul


p.s. we could get to gether and turn the tables on this firm by doing the same back to them.

[dg-cleaning]

absolutely great idea!

[Kevin White]

DG and Paul,

It,s not me ! Touting your patch.

I never cold call and never will, get enough from word of mouth, nor do i use my competitors bad points to my advantage.

Hope you two stay around Darlo and leave the monkey hangers to me.

DG, Simple rule on pricing is what it is worth for you to do it. Some contracts virtually run themselves others don't.

I have one contract that is under £7.50 per hour, lucky if I need to go there once a quarter. Earned over £300 yesterday on one job, after wages and materials. Pricing used to terrify me when I first set out you just get used to it. Once you start picking up work you will be worried by all the H & S and employment legislation and then why you lost such and such a contract. It's all part of the game and you learn as you go.


Regards
Kevin

[Kevin White]

Hi DG.

I wouldn,t be afraid to boast on your website who your major clients are but can't see much benefit from the time and effort of adding thier logo's and hyperlinks. Might just be me, i am not the biggest believer in the pro's of web sites.
My only other concern, and don't take this wrong, is your name. Domestic, commercial and industrial cleaning are 3 different games, you may be a domestic goddess but are you a commercial goddess.
Finally you are from darlo and don't know where monkey hangers are from, SHAME ON YOU, everyone knows we are in the first division.

[Bertie Boo]

DG

Do you charge by the hour then (or is this your own 'guide' price, mine is £10 per hour before costs, i have to attract that over the course of the day...) or by the job?

Anything under £10 an hour sounds like a bargain. I'm in Birmingham, in the area where i am Molly Maids is the name that stands out every time (though people do use others as well of course) so i try to be competitive with what i think they are charging. It is difficult because understandably they dont print prices.

Mine is a different situation of course as i work alone, and, on the whole, people have told me that, given the choice, they would always prefer to have the exact same cleaner each time. That is very hard to find (people like me who are self-employed, insured, and take all the equipment that is). I also dont ever advertise (the work finds me) and -generally speaking- i don't/can't do one-offs, i depend on the regular repeat work.

I have often wondered if i could make my 'business' bigger, i'm now in my fourth year and as well as domestic cleaning i did maintain an office building for over a year, but dropped that when i got more than enough domestic daytime work. I had a lady helping me occasionally but found it more bother than it was worth (even though she was a good cleaner, albiet slower than me). I dunno  . My long term plans (i hope) will be to get into the training side, maybe become an NVQ assesor. I'm hoping to do my A1 in the next 12 months.

Sorry, dont know why i'm telling you this, just so nice to find like minded people after all this time. I wish i knew other who do what i do (working alone). Loved your website BTW, and, believe me, i've seen some awful websites for cleaning companies.

Bertie

[Bertie Boo]

Hey DG!

Thanks.

Wonder Man actualy (though i dont mind when folk 'laughingly' refer to me as their 'cleaning lady' lol. Funny, i thought people would be put off by having a male cleaner, but not so...

Feedback is (so much for political correctness!) 1) the ladies of the house dont feel 'threatened' as they would by having another lady poking round the house (i guess thats a woman thing?) 2) they think that a man is always stronger and as such i'll be more incliend to move furniture, 3) its been said that as i have no children people dont have to worry about me not showing up like i might if the kids were bad. As i say, all VERY un-PC, but never the less it's what's been said.

I left a full-time job to do cleaning, i had to find a part-time checkout job at Tescos for the first few months untill i'd got enough work. My partner has a good job so that -and having no kids- did make it easier to get started. Just as i was about to leave Tesco (i didnt have all the work i needed but was well on the way) my old boss rang and asked me to go clean the offices i'd worked in. This was a real life-line for me as it was reasonably light work and it was 5 nights a week. Without it i don't know what i'd have done.

The staff all remembered me so i didnt get any grief about being 'just the cleaner', and they paid me on time (though i suspect that was due to the fact that i was also cleaning the house of the cheif accountant for the company  ).

i went to Gran Canaria for a week in April 2006 and left my 'little star' Julie in charge of the office (i worried about it for the whole week 'cos she was only 'doing me a favour', i prayed that there would be no accidents whilst i was gone) and she did me proud, although i wasnt so keen having help in the domestic jobs. Anyway, i gave the office up after my holiday as i was inundated with domestic work and found that doing the office at night after doing 3 houses was a *bit* much. Still, it bought us a week in Gran Canaria.

More than anything i do wonder how domestic cleaners who work for a company get on going into different houses all the time? It takes a long time to get to know the places inside out i find, and to learn how people like things left. I suppose that only applies to regular work. Much as i love the people i work for (i do 14-17ish jobs a week for about 30 different clients over a 4-week window) i would like to do more one-off work, if only for the money.

A few weeks back i quoted a commercial client who'd aquired new offices and wanting them cleaned double what i would have charged a domestic for the same amount of time i'd spent, just because i knew they wanted the work doing ASAP, i knew i could make the time, and i knew they'd pay (actually i had an insider who advised me on that last point, in fact it was because of her -she being an ex-colleague who has thrown a fair bit of work my way over the years, god love her- that they'd be prepared to pay to get the job over and done with...) i blush to say it, but i charged more because i'd get away with it...

I've also got an army of 'old dears' who have me every few weeks to do the things they can no longer do and, more importantly, can't find a cleaning company to do (i guess its too specific to be profitable, i'm talking bed changing, sorting through cupboards, and, the OAP favourite - changing the net curtains!). Old people rock! 

Bertie

[Bertie Boo]

ha ha lol, no  the 'old dears' are most certainly the clients and not the staff!!!


When my friend helped me out on the odd few houses, i could never settle. She did a good job, just that not having done it myself i couldnt't settle. She also hated being in houses when people were in (i dont have that problem, just as well as i never know who's going to be in or will come home whilst i'm there). Oh and the pair of us would talk for England which of course slowed us down.

It also showed me how very stuck in my ways i am. It wasnt her fault but she never put things in the car in the way i'd learnt to put them so as to get everything in. That took time to sort out i noticed. She was also very proactive in some ways and yet unable to think outside the box in others. Unfortunatly both would present a problem, the former meant i often saw her doing things that i'd not agreed to do, the latter mean that i had to keep checking and shooing her on.

I realised in that short time i was never cut out to be anyones boss.

I also found it hard to work with another cleaner in the house, i've seen other companies going into houses in threes and fours, they must be falling over each other ?!??!!??!?!

Bertie