It is all very well either builders being short of work or people having been made redundant starting up window cleaning, but they still have to get the work!
That isn't an easy thing to do...it becomes self limiting.
For those of us who have already built up and established rounds, we are unlikely to lose more than a handful of accounts, especially if the work we have done is good, and the price isn't excessive.
Most people don't want to swap and chop just to save a pound, they also realise when the price they are charged is in fact reasonable. If they are paying £15 and someone comes along and says they will do it for a tenner, unless £15 is way high for the work they are going to know it is probably just some fly-by-night window cleaner who isn't going to last more than a couple of months.
It's much harder to build a round in times of recession!! And if there are new window cleaners around every corner, there will be far to little work to go around and sustain them all!!
It becomes self limiting in the end and if you are well established then you are far better set to withstand the recession than someone starting out.
And as for Matt and the 25 quid price V his 10 quid price;
Well I'm with Matt on this one, maybe he could have gone from 10 quid to £12.50 but an average semi is only going to take him 10 or 15 minutes to clean, and 25 or 30 quid falls well into the category of over priced and greedy (in most area's of the country anyway)
And the customer is also going to be well aware some window cleaner who knocks out their house in ten minutes and then knocks on the door asking for £30 is ripping her off.
We all want to make good money, but it is no good just charging extortionate prices to do it. You make money by working smart, if you are a one man outfit then you hone your skills so that you are as quick and efficient as it is possible to be.
If you have what it takes then you will build your business, employ others and so on and so forth.
In times of plenty you might get away with sky high prices, but when the bad times come, then you are the window cleaner who is going to lose out to those very builders who are starting up!
Whereas matt, charging a tenner a house will still be earning bloody good money and won't be losing more than a handful of accounts to new starters....
Ian