how's it going down your way lads with domestic prices seems like a lot of lads up north on
domestics have gone uh gone mad and working for nothing undercutting hmm yeah you shouldn't have
to we've got to be really careful at the minute when it comes to pricing stuff up because like a
lot of the guys have said we if we like start all trying to undercut each other or not necessarily
us but some guys in the trade it starts to get to that silly low price where you um
guys are trying to bash something out as quickly as they can because they've gone in so tight yeah
on the price and uh that's when the workmanship starts starts faltering mate and that's when
like bad reputations start creeping in and uh i couldn't agree i couldn't agree more and what i
find happens a lot following that is then we'll price jobs and i'll say the plaster has jumped ship
and we'll say what happened he said one minute he was working away and then he just disappeared and
i said how much what did he price and he sort of do a bit of 10 minute math yeah and you think
hang on a minute you know he's only just covered his materials and a few days labor here yeah and
this job's like weeks long and i think that happens quite a bit where they go in too cheap they get
halfway along the job and realize i'm not going to earn any money on this and they'll jump ship it leaves the
customer you know up x creek with the water paddle um and then first to come in and sit but um it's
something i did when i first started um which was a silly uh strategy which was to i did it i'm guilty
of it myself undercutting undercutting the more established businesses i think it's something you do
when you're young and you may be a little bit naive to business and you think well if they're charging
200 a hour and um it gets you the work but then of course there's a reason that they're charging 200
a day you know you you end up just spinning your wheels you're not earning any profit yeah and you
can't move forward so um i think we're all we're all guilty of it i know i did it when i was younger
um it's you're trying to you're hungry to get your name out there and get the work coming in
yeah yeah but as time goes is we try we try and um target customers that you know they're not looking
for a cheap job they're looking for quality yeah and we and i think if you build your reputation up
enough um in the local area the customers will come to you rather than you clawing away for the
work yeah and they'll actually come to you and say i've heard about your reputation and we want you to
do the job you want right and it can often mean your price yeah it can literally sometimes it can be
naming your price because they've had so bad experience with roughbusters they just want a decent job and
they're willing to pay you know pay you the right money for that i mean one of the last jobs i did
um well i haven't done it yet but i went to look at and the the people in there sort of said they'd
well we have a quote but they were kind of like quotes where the guy walks in has a look around and
goes uh uh yeah three guys uh 300 pound a day each guy we'll be here about a week and that was for a job
but i looked at that i'll probably do it in a week on my own and uh i basically gave him a verbal quote
there and then and some of the other guys as well and i think what someone else that gave him a quote
was more or less a text message you know mate this is how much it's going to cost so of course then
when i go around there and have a good old chat about whatever he wants to talk about and then send
him what looks like a professional quote i hope it looks professional after all these years yeah it's
kind of like you know just wanting to do the job whatever you know um when you get customers that
sort of say when can you do this for me and then they don't then they say yeah whatever it costs you
know knowing that you're not going to skin them anyway but that is lovely um when it happens mate
that's that's how you want it to be oh it is yeah at the end of the day recommend you can't beat
recommendation can you i mean even today in options available to us you still can't beat being having
your name put forward by somebody's mate said to them look use eric is he'll do a top job for you
you've won the job before you're in the door haven't you half the time yeah if people can feel
that their job's going to be you know they haven't got to worry about it it's going to take so much
stress off of them compared to when you just get a guy and you've never met in your life and thinking
well i hope you know hopefully you've done a bit of homework on them and uh yeah and it all pans out
well and then you use that same guy forever more which is generally how it tends to work
once someone's used to spread and they're happy they'll stick with that spread unless for some
reason you just can't do a job on a particular date but a lot of people will wait as well which is
fantastic stuff