Upselling or Bait and switch?

In the carpet cleaning business there are 2 general ways for pricing your service. The first way is called full value pricing. Here you calculate what it costs to provide the service, add on your desired margin plus retirement costs and equipment replacement costs and you are there. This resulted in a price that your customer knew up front before you started the job. Many of the services to complete the job were all inclusive in the price. This is how it is still done in many of the smaller centers of the USA and Canada. It works there, because competition in small towns is low, and price chopping is rare.

In recent years another system has grown to be dominant in many of the larger centers. That is loss leader selling. Here the service is offered below the true cost of providing it , in the advertised price. An example of this would be where 2 rooms get cleaned for $49. The real costs may me $80 or more , but the company is relying on the cleaner to sell the customer additional services while in the home to make up the difference on the loss suffered on the base special. Sometimes this is carried too far, and high pressure sales tactics are used to sell uneducated customers services they don't want ot need. If you advertise a service for less than it costs you, and jam other services to the customer regardless of need, is this ethical?

How do we change this? Or is this way alright with you?

Joel wrote" That is the way of the World"

 

Getting the shaft?????? Or buying milk below cost?lol. In the selling of goods, this has been done a long time, because that is a commodity and competitive selling produces that result on apples sold against apples. A service is different, and varies in quality from provider to provider. We can teach the customer that our service is valuable or it is not. I used to price my service at .10/sq ft back in 1996, but now get .50/sq ft for it. What has changed? Me! I woke up to the fact that the only one that stopped me from charging more was my perception of what my service was worth. Once I beleived that, I could make my customers believe it too. I now have the highest cleaning prices in Calgary, and have for 3 years now.In case you think that some boom in the Calgary economy made this happen, I will tell you that the average price charged in Calgary for furnished residential carpet cleaning is still no higher than .20/sq ft charged by my would be competiors.But in my price bracket, I have no competitors! It only took me 5 years to 5X my price to where I am now. I fired alot of customers that did not agree with me, but now have ones that pay my price. It can be done.

Edited by Superglide Ken

What a lot of customers do is... "fail to read the ads properly" there is no such thing as a bait and switch if you read the ad.

read read

the size of the ad cost money... you want the most important things to be up front..

it doesn't matter they would still call... they don't trust small companies like yours doug...

In the gta you'd be out of business already douggie boy

Good discussion boys. Hopefully a few others will join in too with their input.

Mr. Steamer:  You are probably right.  There is a commerical that used to be on TV I think FRAM used to run it. "  You can pay me know or pay me later"  I like that add.  I don't use those words because I don't think they would be apprioate in someone's home.  But our comapny has ethics and we backup all our statements.  Weather it is an insurance claim or a simple carpet cleaning job.  It is done our way or get someone else.  If I am guaranteeing the job it is done my way.  Unfortunately we are not Wendy's the job is not done you way it's done our way to your satisfaction.  Let me tell you something else Steamer.  In a small area like where I live in not everyone from the city could handle the fact in this small area you can run but you can't hide.  People call at all hours to ask questions, people stop you on the street, when you are out for a special dinner it dosen't matter to them.  My wife even gets asked at the grocery store how do you get this out.  People will try to book you when you meet them on the street.  Life is different in a small town.  You have no set hours because if they want you  they will find you.

Thats what I'm talking about doug... you are the big name in your town.. everyone else is small fry... you have cornered the market.. how can anyone else compete???  A Customers wants the same company the same Tech, the same everything as they got last time...

and thats our good ol boy doug

in a small town thats the way it should be.... but the GTA is big it's hard to corner the whole market