Advice needed pleas

HWCS said:

Been asked to clean a bungalow, 6 windows 2 doors and a canservatory

Easy peasy £17

But they also want facias, and conservatory roof cleaned

Ive got no idea how to charge this, anybody got any pointers, also could do with suggeations on best way to clean the facias

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Part Timer said:

There's no hard and fast rules regarding pricing for these types of jobs. For example I've just cleared approximately 2200 metres of Gutters and charged less than £2 a metre. I did however finish in 4 days, including travelling. 

We can't advise how much to charge unless we see how dirty and how long it's going to take. 

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Incheck said:

If you haven't done many of these jobs before be careful of the brackets and the rear side of the lips of the fascias, where it meets the soffits. They usually need some serious attention. I did one the other day along with a power wash of the patios in the back garden. 

It was on a main road and the plastics had been up there 30 years. The brackets looked fine from the ground after wfp and degreaser, but going up the ladder they were still covered in soot on this occasion. absolute nightmare to get rid of i was dusting each & every bracket up with mocrofibre cloths and magic sponges in the end. The soffits were so far gone and grey not even a magic sponge or pink stuff would bring them back. Dont know if lightning cleanze (was blackwash) would have done it? 

Its no good looking at it from the ground and going thats fine, because the customer will look out of the bedroom windows and from there you can see an awful lot that you cant see from down below. Best to set your standards high and charge well from the start. I know people say they can breeze through fascia cleans in an hour or two and customers want cheap prices but i wont touch a significantly dirty fascia & soffit clean (obviously a good 3 years + of build up)  for less than £120 regardless of how small the size (not accounting for clearing the gutters or the windows) thats priced on top again. the wfp is the first part, its the shuffling of the ladder and going up & down to check every accessible bracket is clean that takes time.

there are companies out there that will take photos of other peoples poor jobs to make themselves look better. There are customers who will quite happily get the ladder out and go up to check over your work once you're gone and send you a photo of what you've missed. And there is always the fear of being reported to trading standards. You have to be seen to have done everything reasonably practical to do a good job should someone report you.  So over all my advice is dont try and compete with the rest of the market on time or price and dont chance anything. 

We do a lot of FSG ad ons. They are impression making jobs and if done well can land you a lot of recommendations and future repeat work. Just remember...this is the age where everybody under the sun has a camera phone, the world of online reviews, its not the 90’s or early 2000s its 2019 theres no getting away with a quick “thatll do” these days, even if it looks acceptable on first glance. Fuss pots who cant be pleased and who are obsessed with hiring perfectionists are pushing prices up for the average joe who just wants things done at an affordable rate. 

Put your Professors eye glass on everything. Leave knowing you cant possibly have done any more, it should result in payment, a recommendation, no repeat journeys & a good nights sleep. 

On your own not having done it before i would be allocating a full summers day for yourself and possibly more. Its good practise to drop the customer a line “please go round and check everything, make sure youre happy” now is the time to say if you want anything touched up or have any queries. Because when youre on the sofa with your family at 7:30pm eating your dinner the last thing you want is that phone call of doom

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Pjj said:

We do a lot of gfs cleaning  sometimes if it has gone a big grey hypo will work a treat and other times it doesn’t do a thing , when quoting I will quite often do a test patch on the worst part of the property and tell the customer that’s the finish they can expect ,Evan on jobs that I haven’t really been happy with due to greying of old plastics  the customer has been delighted ,personally I would never ask the customer if they are happy  if you have done your best the first time ,what are you going to do if they say they arnt happy ?? It’s always worth explaining you are offering a cleaning service not a restoration , if the plastics are that bad I suggest they put the money into replacing it rather than having it cleaned 

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