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?

How about the supermarkets selling milk at below cost to get you in there and shaft the corner stores.

How about buying a pair of glasses and get the second free? Of course you need the anti glare and scratch resist.

Thats the way of the world.

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.

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

Damn I'm glad I don't live in a small redneck town like that.

Man in good old rude Toronto if they stop you.....you just give them a hard stare and say fukc off lady can't you see I'm trying to chow down with my wife and kids.

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

the price we give on the phone is for cleaning. other services we provide while in the home are extra fabicgarding, pet oder removeal etc .but the client is alwas told before we start what the total cost will be.

surroundings wrote: Ads around here read like: (in bold) ONLY  $XX per ROOM!!! (fine print) subject to site inspection, customer to pre-vacuum and move required furniture, minimum 3 rooms, price does not include GIST, maximum room size 12 sq MITREs, extra costs may apply for light coloured carpet, wool carpets, heavily soiled carpet and pet hair. Price does not include removal of spots or stains. The customers are sick of this stuff.  I pre-quote and give a firm written price to do the job they expect. -Allen

number 1 it would cost a fortune to print... the size of the add would have to be huge

number 2 it would be too much info and you'd loose your focal point (the thing your trying to sell)

no one needs to see all the extras in big bold print... and once it's on the flyer that IS NOT BAIT AND SWITCH

it's you little guys(like myself) that put out an ad with your price $5 bucks a room, and when you get to the customers house it's a whole different story...

I've even heard of companies out here asking for money up front..

so before y'all start posting lets understand what exactly is bait and switch

Allen's been cleaning all summer just trien to raise a dollar

Sometimes I wonder just how their goen to do it

Clean 3 rooms and a hall for just under a dollar

Sometimes I wonder just what I am going to do because there ain't no cure for the bait and switch blues

surroundings wrote: Mr. Steamer, You're right.  I don't think.  But why would I put that fine print in bold on my ad?  My cost includes moving furniture.  It includes GST (Goods and Services Tax ... 10% here in Australia).  I do NOT have a minimum # of rooms, I quote by the square metre of the area I clean, I expect that I will have a heavily soiled creme wool carpet.  (It does not take THAT much longer to clean!  Really!) Very few stains require an oxidisation treatment, or a heat transfer... and those that may, I point out during my quote.  If the stain does not come out during regular cleaning, I'll hit it with a NVDS or a neutral spotter... whatever it takes...let it sit for a while, then extract again. I'm silly enough to quote on a job well done, and include the service of moving funiture, the  service of pre-vac, the service of extracting heavily soiled carpets.  Now that's SERVICE SERVICE SERVICE, ain't it? The above ad basically reads as a set price for traffic areas only on a not-too-dirty dark carpet.  Gimmie a break here... -Allen

As a big outfit you have to put everything on the ad or its called a bait and switch.... EVERYTHING

The time it takes to do a in-home you could have cleaned that customer and been on the way to the next...oh I forgot you only do 1 or so a day so take your time...

See they can try to copy a mom and pop... but there is one problem they have to hire... and employees don't care

mom and pop will always have better service