So I was contacted by a company that is an outsourcing window cleaning company. They are asking for a bid on a local Hardies. Of course they have a little thing saying “do not discuss window cleaning with the store manager”.
I hate these companies. All they do is make window cleaning more expensive to the business, (or rip off inexperienced cleaners which tend to rotate through because they quickly realize the bad deal they have), and take money for doing nothing other than setting things up. It’s terrible.
With nearly 45 minutes of travel one way to get there, (I live in a rural area, “local” is a funny word here, haha!) I would provide a quote for something like $200 for the exterior and $350 for interior and exterior. But is there any reason to not just call the hardies, ask for the manager, and give them a quote directly? I don’t believe I signed any kind of agreement with this company, they just contacted me…
Yah, I have one of these who calls from time to time. They never want to pay what I ask in the estimate but somehow they always end up giving me to go ahead.
It is good to have a minimum price and make it worth your time.
Most cleaning companies will score the cleaning contract which includes windows under one fixed price, so contacting the manager will result in “we already have some one”
I know that can be the case, but this is a window cleaning specific company, Le Grande Window Cleaning. I just hate it so much. Not a respectable vocation in my opinion.
It’s often a corporate decision with chains like that, the local store has no say. So corporate signs on with a large cleaning company and that company subs it all out to the likes of us. My experience with that type of thing is that they tell you how much they will pay and you either do it or not.
I sent them quite a high bid, so I’m not expecting to get it, but they’ve asked me to quote this in the past and years ago the manager at the store called me asking for a quote but at the time I did not travel that far, so the fact they’ve been looking for a consistent cleaner means I may be in luck. I guess we’ll see what happens.
Good question. We do not go around any company that would be looking to us for a job. We get calls from out of state and even out of the country from individuals and companies that bid for jobs across the country. We tend not to do business with companies we are not familiar with. Even in those cases, we do not go around them.
Furthermore, you may not know the relationship the customer and these referrals will lead to. We were a sub contractor on a job for years and the client recently decided to brings us in as a contractor. You just never know …
Most, if not all, of these companies have contracts with the higher ups/facilities managers of these companies. They get cleaning contracts for many/all locations and then reach out to local companies to complete whatever work is needed for that location.
In most cases you can’t cut out that middle man because they are THE only man to talk that business with.
