It's not that we are always in trouble.... :whistling
It's the fact that the nationals and regional companies the banks and brokers use are always raising their discount (Not a discount, but a what they take out of our contracted service fee) and then they are always lowering the service fee they offer. Those of us who have been around the block for a few years start turning down low $$ work orders or even drop the nat/reg all together due to pricing being to low to even pay expenses.
Now said nat/reg throws up a CL add and finds someone who will do it for even cheaper and then that process starts all over.
This is where the $40 wints and $20 lawn cuts have came from!
Example:
Take national "ABC" they contacted us in August looking for securing, clean outs, lawn cuts, refreshes and wint work to be done right here in town, sent low ball pricing like above. We nicely told them we would not even hook the trailer up at those rates, they countered with a raise, we turned it down and they countered once again. This time they were close enough to the high average that we took on some of their work. Well no clean outs, securing or wints have came across, only routine lawn and maid work, little of which was in town, but close enough to still make payroll/expenses.
Fast forward to Nov 1, they stop all routines and ask for bidding for a fall clean up (lawn cut, maid refresh, gutter cleaning, leaf clean up, spider webs down from outside eves on so on... basically the initial minus the trash out) and stated bidding was around $50 minus their 20%. Well kids that is 20-25% less then we were getting for the re-cut and maid refresh alone :wallbash: Decided not to even bid, they contacted us requesting a bid once again, so we threw them what we felt was a good bid for the amount of work :thumbsup: NEVER HEARD A WORD!
Fast forward to Wednesday of this week and we get a hand full or 2 of fall clean ups in our Que. Think right on until we open the work orders and see they are only paying $55, still way less then our routine amounts and not even close to OUR BID. We contact our rep and turn down the work orders at that rate, someone above him contacts us and tells us that we "reward" work to the lowest bidder with the best score card and that was good pricing.
Care to take a guess at what our response was :clap:
Can't wait for lawn season to roll in again, as we are dropping most bank work and only keeping those who pay good and on time to use as fill work!
Sorry for the long post
