The Price of cleaning after Covid 19 a realistic shift for our industry

[Iron Giant]

To clear up any confusion I am pole fed, not Trad i started on trad but £5 shop windows got old real fast so i upgraded... I never splash & dash... 30-40 minutes minimum £20 per month, customers that manipulate their service providers are not customers they are freeloaders and i avoid them like a Vampire avoids the Sun, if they won't pay prices you can live off, bin them & go knocking doors... You will soon see them begging you back 12 month later after a few bad cleans... To those who are very cheap and running around like a mad man, hat's off to you for the effort, but you might want to change jobs... I don't even look at windows without a £65 first clean chemical clean to strip the frames of all the dirt. If i need to charge more I will do... I didn't take the SIESS as it pays money in one hand & steals in the next, i kept working I hardly see my customers they all pay by card... I am single parent and i home school my son so i am part time at the moment... but i still fit in a good two weeks of cleaning per month all my regs five a day... I know many of you have hard faced customers bless you for sticking with it but please please do your self a solid, put your prices up and live your lives without the big mess those cheap customers create... it just takes a little confidence to move forward from them, as for the comment about LSD I should think they are on LSD at such cheap rates... HAVE A FANTASTIC DAY              

Fair play to you for what you are doing on the whole, but your high prices and time spent aren't earning you anymore money than someone with a lower pricing because of the time spent on a job, I am just totally bewildered as to how a 4 bed detached house could take 40 minutes on a regular clean

but what you aren't disclosing is frequency of clean and how far apart the jobs are either if you are doing one job in a street packing up and driving to another job and so on, it's fine saying you are charging £20 but if that's every 6 or 8 weeks then that's different again, we are all different but me personally I prefer compact well priced rounds. 

 

[dazmond]

A £20 job is 20-25 mins work on my round.....like I say if a £20 job took me 40 mins I'd be putting the price up or speeding up considerably!

This is the thing we re all different with various hourly rates....I used to think £30 an hour was good money a few years ago but not now......because I only work a 5 or 6 hour day I need to maximize each hour to earn a decent wedge.....I cant be doing with working 7 or 8 hour days anymore and haven't for years now....

 

[scottish cleaning service]

A £20 job is 20-25 mins work on my round.....like I say if a £20 job took me 40 mins I'd be putting the price up or speeding up considerably!

This is the thing we re all different with various hourly rates....I used to think £30 an hour was good money a few years ago but not now......because I only work a 5 or 6 hour day I need to maximize each hour to earn a decent wedge.....I cant be doing with working 7 or 8 hour days anymore and haven't for years now....

I was the same about £20 to £30 an hour then last week I did a bit of insurance work. £800 for two days work and I wasn't working hard a tall. I realise why folk like the commercial and insurance work but hard when it takes a downturn.

 

[Green Pro Clean Ltd]

Whats everyone's opinion of pricing now that the government have chosen to avoid providing support for so many trades and self employed persons, in that I mean, many simply just don't qualify for grants or loans at all and are having to work anyway... This is just a thought but we all know someone who is suffering because of this virus or at least i do. when i measure what we charge now against our american brothers for window cleans is it now not time to agree on mass a rise in our charges? many will not like this suggestion but that old fashioned way of thinking never makes a living, but that's ok i'd rather cover times like this and any future outbreak because i don't want to expose my family to something like that by working when i should not be, so charging cheap has really got to get kicked out the house, if we want to be called a business and not just a sole trader or self employed, not that there is anything wrong with that. My eyes fell out my head when i heard what Americans charge for cleaning, makes me feel like i don't charge nearly enough for what i do... maybe we don't  i am not sure anymore... Thoughts ? other industries are going to do this when it is all over.       

I lived several years in the US during the late 90s into the new milennium.  There the house windows were done as a spring clean once a year, around the $200 mark, an all day affair for one lad and it was a sizeable house in Sweetwater Florida. 

They regularly do one, perhaps 2 homes per day that is it.  

The UK model is a very unique one in the window cleaning world with monthlies, six weeklies, bi-monthlies - one offs etc almost tailored to whatever a customer wants. 

The customer cares not a stuff if you did not qualify for a gov grant, they will not accept that as grounds for drastic price increases, they will go elsewhere and believe me your competition will happily take those clients from you. 

You say you'd rather cover times like these, you should have already, the first rule of any self employed business person is to bank six months worth of funds to cover any serious downtime, if you did not do this during 'normal' times well sorry but that is on you. 

As for a 'mass rise' in prices we implement our first price increase for our Midlands franchisees in 18 months on Monday and 3 bed semis on a monthly (as an example with rise from £14 to £15 - this is in areas where our competition are charging anywhere from £7 to £10 yet we still continue to grow from strength to strength.  

The money in UK window cleaning comes not from one large job here and there you do once a year and having to find one for each day of the week but from collectin in several small jobs every day.  

Our lead generation company has boomed in the heart of this Pandemic and I have had more than a handful of lads (some off this very forum) contact me saying they lost 90% of their commercial works overnight due to office and shop closures etc and can we help them build up on residential work to compensate.  

For the longest time, I have stated that I do not think a large commercial round is the way forward and many have argued the other side of the coin but it is a horses for courses matter, until those large commercials all of a sudden shut their doors for six months. (Or longer)   I predict a large number of office spaces becoming vacant not only as companies fall but as they adapt and realize that their staff can do 90% of the job from home. 

Mass rise?  Nation wide rise?  Will never, and I do mean NEVER happen.  Round building, canvassing and customer generation is somewhat my area.   I had a conversation with a lad on @Iron Giant patch two weeks ago, he wanted to spend money and buy leads, then proceeded to tell me that he was going to build a round by charging the going rate in his area of £6 for a 3 bed semi, once his round was full he would explain to his clients that is was not sustainable at £6 and up the prices to £10 and £12 on them all  BUT HERE IS THE KICKER ---- when I challenged him and said 'No, start out with where you plan to end, I am sending you pre qualified customers that you can charge £10 and £12 for now today in your area and close at least 70% of them'  he argued back he would rather close 100% at £6 a job --- WTF?  You figure that out.  

Our lads (franchisees) earn between £300 and £350 daily average on an average of £14 jobs, if they lose a £14 job, it is generally replaced almost instantly with a fresh one - a lot easier than trying to replace on £300 plus job every time you looses one.  

There are several lads on and off this forum, myself included, that have been dragging the world of window cleanig into the 21st century screaming and kicking and the pricing along with it, our biggest set back is that there are still so many out there that day in day out REFUSE to believe that their time and service is worth any more than the grattitude of the customer and the pittance of loose change they charge. 

Enough for now, I gotta go find some carrots.   Not as easy as you may think in this town! . 

 

[Iron Giant]

Mass rise?  Nation wide rise?  Will never, and I do mean NEVER happen.  Round building, canvassing and customer generation is somewhat my area.   I had a conversation with a lad on @Iron Giant patch two weeks ago, he wanted to spend money and buy leads, then proceeded to tell me that he was going to build a round by charging the going rate in his area of £6 for a 3 bed semi, once his round was full he would explain to his clients that is was not sustainable at £6 and up the prices to £10 and £12 on them all  BUT HERE IS THE KICKER ---- when I challenged him and said 'No, start out with where you plan to end, I am sending you pre qualified customers that you can charge £10 and £12 for now today in your area and close at least 70% of them'  he argued back he would rather close 100% at £6 a job --- WTF?  You figure that out.

Yeah that's normal for my neck of the woods some even charging £6 for a modern townhouse and that has been the case for a good few years, I'd be amazed how anyone can justify more than a 50% increase then expect to keep all the jobs ?

 

[DS WC west midlands]

Fair play to you for what you are doing on the whole, but your high prices and time spent aren't earning you anymore money than someone with a lower pricing because of the time spent on a job, I am just totally bewildered as to how a 4 bed detached house could take 40 minutes on a regular clean

but what you aren't disclosing is frequency of clean and how far apart the jobs are either if you are doing one job in a street packing up and driving to another job and so on, it's fine saying you are charging £20 but if that's every 6 or 8 weeks then that's different again, we are all different but me personally I prefer compact well priced rounds. 

My cleans run every fourth week so once a month some are in the same street or in the next street over, average clean per month clocks in at around 30 minutes but i allow time to dry & to drive, I do between five -ten a day, average is 6-7.. part time given my commitments...

I am not working too hard i could have a lot more work if i wanted it..

just got to talking to a few other traders a few weeks back.. they are putting prices up after this pandemic when i asked why ? they stated if the government won't take care of us in a time of national crises, it's clear they would not do so in the future and that's a cost they now have to account for... it made sense to me... you pay into the system most of your life if they won't help out now, you have to cover that in future...

Now i know most window cleaners didn't stop working or get any sort of help, because they were left out of anything that could help them... in that situation you have to think about the future...

i just thought, why our industry, as taken for granted as it tends to be, is not doing the same... 

  
                   

      
 

 

[DS WC west midlands]

I lived several years in the US during the late 90s into the new milennium.  There the house windows were done as a spring clean once a year, around the $200 mark, an all day affair for one lad and it was a sizeable house in Sweetwater Florida. 

They regularly do one, perhaps 2 homes per day that is it.  

The UK model is a very unique one in the window cleaning world with monthlies, six weeklies, bi-monthlies - one offs etc almost tailored to whatever a customer wants. 

The customer cares not a stuff if you did not qualify for a gov grant, they will not accept that as grounds for drastic price increases, they will go elsewhere and believe me your competition will happily take those clients from you. 

You say you'd rather cover times like these, you should have already, the first rule of any self employed business person is to bank six months worth of funds to cover any serious downtime, if you did not do this during 'normal' times well sorry but that is on you. 

As for a 'mass rise' in prices we implement our first price increase for our Midlands franchisees in 18 months on Monday and 3 bed semis on a monthly (as an example with rise from £14 to £15 - this is in areas where our competition are charging anywhere from £7 to £10 yet we still continue to grow from strength to strength.  

The money in UK window cleaning comes not from one large job here and there you do once a year and having to find one for each day of the week but from collectin in several small jobs every day.  

Our lead generation company has boomed in the heart of this Pandemic and I have had more than a handful of lads (some off this very forum) contact me saying they lost 90% of their commercial works overnight due to office and shop closures etc and can we help them build up on residential work to compensate.  

For the longest time, I have stated that I do not think a large commercial round is the way forward and many have argued the other side of the coin but it is a horses for courses matter, until those large commercials all of a sudden shut their doors for six months. (Or longer)   I predict a large number of office spaces becoming vacant not only as companies fall but as they adapt and realize that their staff can do 90% of the job from home. 

Mass rise?  Nation wide rise?  Will never, and I do mean NEVER happen.  Round building, canvassing and customer generation is somewhat my area.   I had a conversation with a lad on @Iron Giant patch two weeks ago, he wanted to spend money and buy leads, then proceeded to tell me that he was going to build a round by charging the going rate in his area of £6 for a 3 bed semi, once his round was full he would explain to his clients that is was not sustainable at £6 and up the prices to £10 and £12 on them all  BUT HERE IS THE KICKER ---- when I challenged him and said 'No, start out with where you plan to end, I am sending you pre qualified customers that you can charge £10 and £12 for now today in your area and close at least 70% of them'  he argued back he would rather close 100% at £6 a job --- WTF?  You figure that out.  

Our lads (franchisees) earn between £300 and £350 daily average on an average of £14 jobs, if they lose a £14 job, it is generally replaced almost instantly with a fresh one - a lot easier than trying to replace on £300 plus job every time you looses one.  

There are several lads on and off this forum, myself included, that have been dragging the world of window cleanig into the 21st century screaming and kicking and the pricing along with it, our biggest set back is that there are still so many out there that day in day out REFUSE to believe that their time and service is worth any more than the grattitude of the customer and the pittance of loose change they charge. 

Enough for now, I gotta go find some carrots.   Not as easy as you may think in this town! . 

Yep i know you seen the vids legend 

 

[steve garwood]

Thought I’d soften the tone 

Thought I’d soften the tone 

??????

 

[Green Pro Clean Ltd]

Yeah that's normal for my neck of the woods some even charging £6 for a modern townhouse and that has been the case for a good few years, I'd be amazed how anyone can justify more than a 50% increase then expect to keep all the jobs ?

I did not take him on as a client mate, I don't want his 300 quid for leads then he is astonished when his return is only 120 and starts slagging off the service if you get my drift.  You couldnt drill sense into this one if you tried. 

but i allow time to dry

Sorry, you have stumped me.  Dry what?  

 

[Green Pro Clean Ltd]

Thought I’d soften the tone 

View attachment 20946

??????

See told you that @steve garwood was a Ginger Ninger!! Obviously using the ancient Ninja techniques of invisibility here as well as all the other two gingers (Prince Harry and Harry Potters mate) 
Never thought I would live long enough to see that many Gingers in one place!! 

 

 

[DS WC west midlands]

I don't think the Gov did let us down they have paid out millions to the self-employed so hardly letting us down.

Charging £20 per job is great, but if you are spending 40 minutes or more on a regular clean of a 4 bed house lets say over us Slap & Dash wfper's as I am guessing a trad guy like yourself as you mention detailing then £20 per job isn't as great as it sounds, to get £65 for a average 4 bed house on a first clean I would have had to put LSD in their drinking water the day before I went knocking doors 

if you don't know what detailing is with WFP you need to open your eyes a bit look at them sills, rust stains and rubber scuffs on the doors that I always find on jobs others have so called "cleaned"... 

 

[Green Pro Clean Ltd]

if you don't know what detailing is with WFP you need to open your eyes a bit look at them sills, rust stains and rubber scuffs on the doors that I always find on jobs others have so called "cleaned"... 

Sorry but I would not classify that as detailing - detailing is wiping up a smudge on the corner of the class after blading or wiping off a sill at the end of the job -- 

What you have describes here is what we call first clean restoration -- and hence charge a first clean restoration price for it -- 

We may call it something different but using the word detailing, a word that has been around for as long as window cleaning in an effort to describe a different sort of thing will cause confusions and perplexions. 

Also being that curt about it wont help mate. 

 

[DS WC west midlands]

I did not take him on as a client mate, I don't want his 300 quid for leads then he is astonished when his return is only 120 and starts slagging off the service if you get my drift.  You couldnt drill sense into this one if you tried. 

Sorry, you have stumped me.  Dry what?  

I did not take him on as a client mate, I don't want his 300 quid for leads then he is astonished when his return is only 120 and starts slagging off the service if you get my drift.  You couldnt drill sense into this one if you tried. 

Sorry, you have stumped me.  Dry what?  

Don't you know about drying time on frames? to avoid possible particulate matter being left behind? on the end of one of your vids you said Quote "you have to let them dry" so tbf i really do these days, and it's well worth it...    

 

[Iron Giant]

My cleans run every fourth week so once a month some are in the same street or in the next street over, average clean per month clocks in at around 30 minutes but i allow time to dry & to drive, I do between five -ten a day, average is 6-7.. part time given my commitments...

I am not working too hard i could have a lot more work if i wanted it..

just got to talking to a few other traders a few weeks back.. they are putting prices up after this pandemic when i asked why ? they stated if the government won't take care of us in a time of national crises, it's clear they would not do so in the future and that's a cost they now have to account for... it made sense to me... you pay into the system most of your life if they won't help out now, you have to cover that in future...

Now i know most window cleaners didn't stop working or get any sort of help, because they were left out of anything that could help them... in that situation you have to think about the future...

i just thought, why our industry, as taken for granted as it tends to be, is not doing the same... 

  
                   

      
 

Dry time surely you ain't waiting around for the windows to dry ?

Also once again why should we expect the government to constantly gives us hand out's far too much of this goes on and has gone on for far too many years to start with hence loads of people not working knocking out kids and getting free hand outs and rent paid for them people should look after there own affairs properly and not expect handouts, I learnt some years ago as a couple with no kids we weren't entitled to a penny when the gov used to spout out about working tax credit and so on, 18 years ago when I broke my back I managed to get £60 a fortnight I think it was so my wife worked 6 days a week and took all the overtime she could, 

Bottom line work hard and look after your own as no one else will help you or at least they shouldn't far too much free loading and poor me poor me goes on in this country people need to get off their backsides and get out and work. 

 

[DS WC west midlands]

Sorry but I would not classify that as detailing - detailing is wiping up a smudge on the corner of the class after blading or wiping off a sill at the end of the job -- 

What you have describes here is what we call first clean restoration -- and hence charge a first clean restoration price for it -- 

We may call it something different but using the word detailing, a word that has been around for as long as window cleaning in an effort to describe a different sort of thing will cause confusions and perplexions. 

Also being that curt about it wont help mate. 

yes but those things do come back six months later, so i tend to do them as they come up... i might suffer a perplexion at you're general confusion detailing applies to every clean from the first to the last... if people want to try and get all up their own butt about it, it's not on me ROFL  

 

[DS WC west midlands]

Dry time surely you ain't waiting around for the windows to dry ?

Also once again why should we expect the government to constantly gives us hand out's far too much of this goes on and has gone on for far too many years to start with hence loads of people not working knocking out kids and getting free hand outs and rent paid for them people should look after there own affairs properly and not expect handouts, I learnt some years ago as a couple with no kids we weren't entitled to a penny when the gov used to spout out about working tax credit and so on, 18 years ago when I broke my back I managed to get £60 a fortnight I think it was so my wife worked 6 days a week and took all the overtime she could, 

Bottom line work hard and look after your own as no one else will help you or at least they shouldn't far too much free loading and poor me poor me goes on in this country people need to get off their backsides and get out and work. 

yes i do wait at least 3-5 minutes after a clean just to make sure, i am not in any rush... i am not hard up for it at all...

 

[Iron Giant]

if you don't know what detailing is with WFP you need to open your eyes a bit look at them sills, rust stains and rubber scuffs on the doors that I always find on jobs others have so called "cleaned"... 

Magic sponge job done but not every time, if people are can't pick their feet up or teach their kids how to walk through a door not kick a football off the windows and frames and have a little more respect and care for their property I ain't spending extra time every time on those jobs when most of my other jobs people have have respect for there own property. 

 

[Doug]

Mass rise?  Nation wide rise?  Will never, and I do mean NEVER happen.  Round building, canvassing and customer generation is somewhat my area.   I had a conversation with a lad on @Iron Giant patch two weeks ago, he wanted to spend money and buy leads, then proceeded to tell me that he was going to build a round by charging the going rate in his area of £6 for a 3 bed semi, once his round was full he would explain to his clients that is was not sustainable at £6 and up the prices to £10 and £12 on them all  BUT HERE IS THE KICKER ---- when I challenged him and said 'No, start out with where you plan to end, I am sending you pre qualified customers that you can charge £10 and £12 for now today in your area and close at least 70% of them'  he argued back he would rather close 100% at £6 a job --- WTF?  You figure that out.  

This is an insane approach. I see it as an act of deception on the customers to sign them up at £6 with the deliberate intention to double it. Such an unethical and unprofessional approach has no place in this industry. Also of course it won't work. I would expect at least 90% to cancel. I know I would.

 

[scottish cleaning service]

This is an insane approach. I see it as an act of deception on the customers to sign them up at £6 with the deliberate intention to double it. Such an unethical and unprofessional approach has no place in this industry. Also of course it won't work. I would expect at least 90% to cancel. I know I would.

Its not new, Big companies do it all the time. All you need to do is listen to Sky or Virgin adverts, only £30 a month for 12 months, New Customers Only! Folk are not daft and understand the game all too well. I am probably one of the most expensive window cleaners but I fix things for free, like gutters and downpipes but only for My customers. I get a great feeling when a customer's neighbour ask's me to fix something and I reply "Sorry, I only do work for my window cleaning customers" ?

 

[DS WC west midlands]

Magic sponge job done but not every time, if people are can't pick their feet up or teach their kids how to walk through a door not kick a football off the windows and frames and have a little more respect and care for their property I ain't spending extra time every time on those jobs when most of my other jobs people have have respect for there own property. 

that's a fair comment but i do spend that time and i get well paid for it, it's not much out of my way to clean some rubber scuffs off that have turned up long after a first clean... plus if the Gov tell you that you should stay at home and not go to work to avoid getting sick and dying they have an obligation to support you and in this case they supported very few cleaners only massive companies..

sole traders, most self employed didn't even qualify for anything, and have been forced to carry on working, now nobody minds working... i suppose what they mind is crash price per month cleans, for cleans that should really be at trade minimum prices £50 per month or so.. £50 is any other trades lowest rate to even turn their key in the van...

My point being why have so many of you allowed your customers to dictate your pricing ??? 

you let them bully you all into minimum price work, forgetting it's your job, your the one who has to do it, and with complaints like
"i anit spending time doing that" clearly your too cheap case and point a price rise in this industry is not only well overdue, it needed to stop all the petty bickering i see in this forum, and to change customer perception of window cleaners as a whole now because most people on here spend their time fighting over how others put things in messages or replies and the finer details of cleaning 

Your all divided and should be at least united in your pricing to secure it for everyone who joins it, oh you can pick apart what i say all you like but just remember there are plenty of windows to go around, you talk about people getting off their ass and working ok that's good, but with cheap as chips prices you have no right to even say that if you won't support a standard across the board minimum  price...

No wonder customers treat most of us like **** with attitudes and clever insults like this, it seems the customers have gotten you all to be exactly where they want you in their pocket begging for scraps... lest we forget we watch the youtube vids too and will Quote things you all have said maybe practice what you preach...      

       

 

[Dave B]

that's a fair comment but i do spend that time and i get well paid for it, it's not much out of my way to clean some rubber scuffs off that have turned up long after a first clean... plus if the Gov tell you that you should stay at home and not go to work to avoid getting sick and dying they have an obligation to support you and in this case they supported very few cleaners only massive companies..

sole traders, most self employed didn't even qualify for anything, and have been forced to carry on working, now nobody minds working... i suppose what they mind is crash price per month cleans, for cleans that should really be at trade minimum prices £50 per month or so.. £50 is any other trades lowest rate to even turn their key in the van...

My point being why have so many of you allowed your customers to dictate your pricing ??? 

you let them bully you all into minimum price work, forgetting it's your job, your the one who has to do it, and with complaints like
"i anit spending time doing that" clearly your too cheap case and point a price rise in this industry is not only well overdue, it needed to stop all the petty bickering i see in this forum, and to change customer perception of window cleaners as a whole now because most people on here spend their time fighting over how others put things in messages or replies and the finer details of cleaning 

Your all divided and should be at least united in your pricing to secure it for everyone who joins it, oh you can pick apart what i say all you like but just remember there are plenty of windows to go around, you talk about people getting off their ass and working ok that's good, but with cheap as chips prices you have no right to even say that if you won't support a standard across the board minimum  price...

No wonder customers treat most of us like **** with attitudes and clever insults like this, it seems the customers have gotten you all to be exactly where they want you in their pocket begging for scraps... lest we forget we watch the youtube vids too and will Quote things you all have said maybe practice what you preach...      

       

I think someone needs to get off their high horse.

You are a window cleaner.. next one up from bin men in customers eyes.

We know it's a well paid job and I earn enough to not be told my prices are rubbish just because you wipe a few sills.

I'm happy to be thought of like that as then it won't offend customers who realise just what I earn.