Fish Window Cleaning blooper of the year

I figured I would share this funny story. My wife and I do a lot of door to door commercial and storefront cold calling. I was cleaning all day today so my wife was flying solo. She was targeting two large plazas where we already have a decent presence.

She calls me and says, “I’m at a restaurant with 140 colonial cutups. I want to say $200+ per cleaning, but I know they won’t go for it. The manager says Fish Window Cleaning does it weekly”. I told her, “We literally do the restaurant next door. I know which restaurant you’re at and what it looks like. I can clean it by myself in 2 to 2 1/2 hours if I haul ass. Tell him $125/cleaning just because we’re there every week anyway”.

She calls me back 5 minutes later and says, “The manager almost fainted and said Wow that’s a lot!. Fish does it for $42”.

Just WTF? In our daily sales travels we come across all kinds of ridiculous pricing. Sometimes we’re way too high, sometimes we’re way too low, but usually we’re spot on with most of our legitimate competition. Our offer of $125 was kind of a cut throat move on our part to be honest and typically we don’t operate that way. We made the “lowball offer” simply because it would have been $6,500 of annual revenue and we literally do their next door neighbor anyway.

How the hell is a company that paid $100,000 to a franchisor just for the right to use their “brand name” charging $42 for a job that will take a very experienced window cleaner at least 2 hours?

Let me break it down for you. 10% goes straight to the franchisor in the form of royalties, technology fee, finders fee, and this fee and that fee. The window cleaner usually makes 30-33% commission so a whopping $13-$14 for his 2-3 hours of slave labor. The genius salesman is probably getting a tiny cut. They have an office, vehicles, insurance, and all the other usual expenses.

The homeless guy who rides a stolen bike with two flat tires and cleans windows with a windshield squeegee would even charge more than $42.

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Was that 140 individual panes or 140 windows with divided lights in them?

140 total panes inside and out. Blinds on the insides. Plenty of tables and booths to maneuver around.

$0.33 per pane in and out is what they are charging.

Are they large panes or the size you generally see in a French door that has say 3 panes across and 5 up and down?

Sorry for all the questions. I’m just trying to get a better perspective on the job your talking about.

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Just to clarify when I say large panes I mean large colonial style panes. So more like 4 large colonial panes per window for example.

While I agree the price is crazy low, I’m betting that it could be done in an hour to an hour and a half.

Hear me out :wink:

I clean the lower exteriors on this place monthly, in under twenty minutes, from the time I pull up to the time they cut the check:

That’s 102 true divided panes. The key is having a vehicle-mounted wfp setup, with heated water. I also clean the insides of the two doors with sprayway within that time frame.

140 interior panes could take me 45 minutes or less, if I set a good pace and had a squeegee cut to size:

The video shows 25 panes cleaned in 3 minutes. And if I was doing them weekly, I wouldn’t have to scrub as furiously. Add another 15 minutes for finagling with blinds and tables, and I’m under 1.5 hours total.

But even if I managed to get it under an hour, I still wouldn’t go below $100. That’s a ton of glass. :smirk:


Chances are, FiSH isn’t setup at all to complete this job in less time than you. My guess is the salesman was trying to meet a quota, and gave no regard for whether the job would be profitable. ‘Hopefully’ they have higher paying stops on their route that can subsidize a foolishly low price here and there.

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Sometimes the Fish sales people bid very very low just to make a sale.

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This is why I worked for Fish for a total of one month before I went out on my own lol

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I am a Fish franchisee and I’ve lurked around this forum for a while too. @BlackTieAustin, I see you worked for Oskar as an Ops Manager for a few years, he’s an excellent guy to work with; he was around before my time but I’ve spoken with him and he has a great reputation.

As I am sure you know there are ways to compensate the technicians on under-bid jobs. I have a few in my office, the guys all know which jobs they are, and they can see the adjusted amount they are getting paid on.

I am glad you got to start your own business after your service.

Each Fish franchise is run slightly differently so pricing does vary a bit. As @BostonMike mentioned, perhaps a sales person got carried away, or perhaps they just made a mistake and the owner decided to honor that pricing for the customer rather than try to renegotiate. I’ve also found that a lot of times when I am bidding a prospect doesn’t even really know what they are paying for from their current window cleaner; they may think they are paying for Inside & Outside but getting Outside Only service. That could the situation here, maybe Fish is doing Outside Only Service for that price but the customer thinks it is Inside & Outside.

In my area I am the highest priced storefront window cleaning company and we do quite a bit of storefront. I could probably double my storefront business if I lowered my pricing but that’s not a good long-term strategy in my opinion. There have been only a small handful of times that we provided a bid and we were lower priced than the competition.

@Infinity thanks for your reply. That has got to be one of the most constructive posts I’ve seen when discussing Fish. You bring up some excellent points regarding other stops on the route. The stop being discussed may just be a filler to round-out the route.

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My area has a few Fish Companies and a Squeegee Squad, I have seen this pricing for years. My experience comes from businesses calling for a quote because they are not satisfied with current service and we find what they currently are being charged and who cleans it.

All you can do is pitch your service and what value it brings to a customer. We want customers who find value or price alone, balance is key.

hey thanks for speaking up, fish is often maligned on here and it’s nice to hear the other side.
:slight_smile:
:cactus:27

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Fish franchisees are human just like most of the people on this forum :slight_smile:. Mistakes happen. I have the same thought that @BlackTieAustin had in this situation when a storefront prospect tells me what they are currently paying for one of my competitors to clean their windows.

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My thought to why the franchises seem to have a overall lower price point is the owner, much of the time, has zero experience and hires managers that are also learning along the way.

Got to start somewhere though.

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So some of us are not human?

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MANY OF US ARE NOT HUMAN!
:robot:
:cactus:27

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A little confrontational are we? Jk. I don’t care. But I doubt he meant anything negative.

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Was referring mainly to the Canadians! JK @cactus27.

Just having some fun and trying to lighten the mood @BostonMike. I got my undergrad from UMass Amherst, always loved Boston! My wife has never been to Boston. Would love to my wife and our daughter when she’s a bit older.

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I was just kidding as well. Forgot to say lol or something

Mistakes certainly do happen and sometimes we learn things the hard way. That holds true for anything in life, not just window cleaning. If that’s truly the case here, the right thing to do would be for the franchisee or salesman to go to the customer and basically say, “Hey sorry but we totally goofed on this one. The real price would be $142 not $42. We value your business and would like to continue serving your window cleaning needs, but at the price we mistakenly quoted you, we will be bankrupt within the next 6 months and that’s not an option”.

It makes no sense to clean a weekly account at bargain basement rates. If the franchisee is “taking care of his guys” and slipping him a $20 bill from his wallet every week as extra motivation, what’s the point really? Yes, he’s honoring his commitment to the customer and that’s great and all, but the only guy really making any money is the guy sitting in the corporate HQ in St. Louis.

I have a customer right now who I’m going to have to break the news to next week. She called me up out of the blue late one evening and said the place next door referred her. She told me over the phone that she had four windows and a door. It was late at night when she called and I was running on a treadmill at the gym. I was like, "Only four windows? Ok well we have a minimum charge of $xx.xx and that certainly qualifies for our minimum. I show up a few days later and she has FOURTEEN windows, not FOUR windows. At first I was thinking, “What kind of crap is this lady trying to pull?” I cleaned her place at my minimum price, didn’t say a word about the obvious discrepancy with the window count, and was fuming mad the rest of the day. Then I got to thinking about it, and realized I probably heard her wrong over the phone considering I was in a crowded gym when I took her call. There’s a very good chance that I probably did hear her wrong and it was my mistake. Next time I see her, I’m going to be honest with her and say, “Sorry but I messed up. I think I heard you wrong over the phone. The new price is $xx.xx.” She’ll probably understand so I’m not too worried about it.