Hi all,
Not sure if this has come up before anywhere, but I am a garden designer and I work very closely with a core group of experienced landscapers who I trust to do a good job and who are all brilliant with clients.
I know they work hard to build up a quote, sometimes these can take quite a few days making phone calls, calculations, discusing various changes to get into into budget etc, visiting site to run through things, presenting the quote to the client etc.
Now, one landscaper who shall remain nameless (I have tripped over his work when I went to see a friend!) advertises in a publication that I and my collegues advertise in. His advert says he will take 10% off any exisiting quote.
Is this ethical, moral, legal? I just think when we have all gone to such work to get a job priced and I have manipulated and tweeked the design to meet a budget, add to that those client chats, meetings, site visit, emails etc....how can someone come walzing in and take that quote without doing any of the work calculating it, and deduct 10%, get the job and then build it.
It has made many landscapers in the area furious. And I can understand why.
Your thoughts?.......
Views: 46
Replies
Certainly unethical and immoral, but no doubt legal.
Can imagine him running into problems if you've sourced unusual materials from various suppliers, not detailed in the quote.
10% is a big slice to absorb, but if I were he, I'd be more worried about the furious landscapers...
Hi Bo, its a cut throat business i'm afraid and its not going to change any time soon. Personally i think that so long as he's operating within the law then he's not doing anything wrong. He is free to charge whatever he likes.
Your recommended contractors can either emphasize quality to prospective clients and refuse to budge on price or tackle it head on and engage in a price war.
Wasted time spent preparing quotes only to have someone else do the work is a risk of providing free quotes.
Good luck and don't get angry, get even.
its probably a case of the landscaper cant be bothered/able to work the quote out and would rather beat any quote and get work then spend time running about and working things out and not get anything its underhanded but a lot of customers don't care as long as the price is right
I can understand why that would annoy landscapers.
I am a firm believer that to run a succesful business you need to have a genuine passsion for what you do and also that you have to be "in it" for the right reasons. To just offer, across the board 10% discounts not only stinks of desperation but for me indicates a person with no passion for what they do. People like this come and go all the time. Its not possible to build a strong, sustainable business on that kind of foundation. Let him crack on, he'll come unstuck before long
yep, he can save himself a lot of time quoting, and if the price doesn't smell tight to him, then he isn't obliged to take the job anyway....
Brendan McHale said:
One of the major advantages of being involved in the quoting process is that you get a better insight into the job as a whole. By merely re-quoting someone else's work they won't really know what to expect.
I'd also add that if any client were tempted to place a contract with any firm knowing they were merely undercutting others then one has to ask if they really are the right clients to partner with in the first place?
I agree with your Phil. If a customer is solely driven by price and happy to deal with someone openly undercutting then it does make you question them also! We see undercutting all the time they end up with lots of work - quite likely none of it profitable!
Phil Voice said:
Have any of your clients actually decided to go with this non recommended landscaper? I can't imagine many people who have paid for your work then going with a non recommended landscaper to save themselves 10%. They pay you to design something and then risk getting someone in who you haven't used before? it just doesnt make sense. Presumably you would strongly dissuade the client from spending a lot of money getting your design built by someone you don't recommend.
Anyway that's business - there are far more underhand practices in most other industries!
It's a cut throat business only with people who don't have any scruples! To undercut just for the sake of undercutting is despicable. Still, if there's any justice in the world, people like that will come unstuck in the end.
briggsandscrapem said:
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next