Carpet Protector – What’s it best for?

When talking on the phone we tell customers we move most furniture. NO piano’s, no entertainment centers, china cabinents, if they want us to move the chest of drawers we tell them to take the drawers out because we do not want to be in their drawers. 😆 Other than this regular price 55 dollars. NO furniture in the room take off 15%. If we only clean the traffic areas we take off 20%. These rates go for all size rooms. I can not charge one price for one person and another price for another person. Everyone knows everyone here. So send me your huddled masses. Rich, Poor needing their carpet cleaned. They all get the same service at the same price.
Jamie

P. S. Sorry I was waxing poetic for a moment

we charge by the ft for the same reason devlin stated. we have large an small homes. also in our area a lot of people charge by the sq ft. if a commercial job calls i never estimate over the phone. i always go and see it. depending on the dollar valume if its a nice size job i will go back to the office and type a proposal and hand deliver instead of just hand writing. just for the more professional look. as far as us not charging more for stains, the onlything we charge extra for is pet urine. all other red dye etc we include. the reason being 99% of our jobs dont require much extra time if any. when we do have a real bad job we bite the bullet. if we can book more jobs by not charging extra we take advantage og it instead of nickel and diming the customer. if we find that we start losing we may change. but so far it paid off more than none. hope this helps.

Dave,

Yes we do. I subtract out the furniture if we’re not cleaning under it. This has benefits. First, if they are concerned about price, this will lower it as it is less square footage total. Second, encourages them not to have us clean under furniture which means I don’t have to move it and risk damage to it or myself (or employee). Third, if I charge them for the whole room, but am only cleaning traffic path, why wouldn’t they question me and say clean under it all if I’m charging them for it all? We avg $40-45 per room with this pricing. Your points are quite valid that a small path is much dirtier than a large path and if I did per room, I would have a hard time discounting it.

Dave,

To get $40-$45 / room for just the path around the bed, etc..how much are you charging per sqft?

I never figured this out, how to charge per square foot….Do you have different charges per square foot for a small and potentially dirtier area or hall than say a living room or larger cleaner area???

This whole arna of charging is so foreign to me…I suppose that if I had gone on a few jobs and heard the patter, it might make sense….I believe tht almost all around here charge by the square foot and charging by the room may kill me on some deals….wish I could get the hang of it.

Mathematically challenged I think and much to slow to figure out and give a quote over the phone.

ANy help would be appreciated…thanks

Dave

Dave,

Yes, a lot of bedrooms will be less than the $40/room, but masters, family rooms, dining rooms, and living rooms are more than $40. On avg for me, a bedroom is around 100 sq ft, master is at least 200 sq ft (this includes bath/closet too as builders here carpet everthing). Combo living room/dining room are usually 300 sq ft total and family rooms are usually 200-250 sq ft. I currently charge $.30/sq ft. I did raise my price on stairs to $3/stair, which also puts me right at that $40 range.

@bsutton wrote:

Charging per sqft does take some practice. The more you do it the easier it becomes. You will eventually be able to have sqft averages in your head for certain rooms. For example: Ave. bedroom traffic is 75 sqft., hall is 45 sqft, dining is 120, LR is 300, Family room is 350 and rec room up to 600 sqft.
When getting into the larger rooms with less soil and staining, I discount. My base price to clean and stain protect is 50 cents/sqft. With this in mind, if I clean a quality house with 2400 sqft but it only takes me 4 hrs, I may only charge $400. It’s my way of rewarding the good housekeepers. I try not to charge more that $100 per hour. On the other hand, if I go in to clean a 200 sqft room and spend 2 hours, I will figure out a way to get close to $200 from them without pissing them off. I’ve begun to individualize my pricing. It seems to be working and seems to put more money in my pocket. I think it will come back to bite me some day as customers start to talk to one another but at that point, I will have to tell them that pigs cost more to clean up after. 😉

It’s like you took a page right out of my book! That is exactly how I Price. If I feel like I’m losing money then I start charging extra for spot removal. If I feel like things are moving along then they start getting discount’s. I try to keep my pricing between $90.00 and $120.00 an hour on average, but shootfor the $100.00 mark. I like the Idea of requiring the beds took moved if we are to be cleaning under them. I HATE MOVING BED’s!

We run a couple of trucks so consistency is pretty important. Both technicians need to have the same basis for charging. People do talk, so if one gets a better deal than the other we don’t want to have to explain why. So we run a special on the 1st 375 square feet for $99. Additional square footage is .35/square foot. Stain protectant is .11/square foot and we find about 65% to 70% will take it.

We’ll move furniture excluding things like pianos, china hutches, large TV’s, dressers and beds. We keep a bag of about 25 sliders in each van which help when moving the furniture. Anything we don’t move, we vacuum undrneath. We find it actually easier to prep and clean when things are moved. It’s just part of our service and I think people like that here.

The downside to running the $99 special, is we have kinda ‘trained’ some customers to look for the special. To combat this, the amount of square footage offered for $99, has shrunk over the years. We feel that our rates need to increase every year just like everything else. We rarely have any complaints about price.

There’s no right or wrong in this regard. Know what your profit margins are and where you want them to be . . . that should help guide pricing.

Now back to the fabric protector. I don’t use the tissue demonstration because I think it is very misleading. I also tell them it is not a miracle cure for all things. I tell them exactly what my experience is with it and in the evaluation, if I don’t see any real need for the protection, I also give that opinion. I often get them to buy it just because they know I am being honest. But most of all, they give me referals because of my honest and true evaluation of their needs. I may not get a $100 sale of fabric protector but the added business covers that loss.