Quick questiosn for the professionals, How do you guys charge for messes and spills. Yesterday I detailed the interior of a mazda 3. It looked pretty bady, needed to be vacuumed three times before it looked resonable. The owner had kids and had NEVER cleaned the car. The problem was underneath all the loose dirt there were coffee cus worth of spills, ground in chocolate and salt stains. It took me nearly 6 hours of labor to get it into better condition. Infact, I was still disgusted, some of the ground in dirt just couldn't be brought up. a drastic improvement, for sure, but nowehere near the standard I like to uphold. Aynways, I was mad at myself the whole time for not charging more...When I was finished, the owner was blown away and actually gave me a $40 tip ontop of what I normally charge....Which is great. I'm glad they had realistic expectations. I'd like to avoid a potential pricing disaster in the future. So, how do you all like to deal with really bad interiors? what do you like to tell customers before You start?
Tell the owner that after years of neglect, it may take extra time and money to restore it. If you find some hidden stains, just contact the owner and say "This came up, I can remove it but it would take an extensive amount of extra time so I would need to charge more.", or something along those lines.
Charge hourly. I need to do this as well so don't think that I'm coming from a learned place. Make sure they know that they get what they pay for, but you don't do favors. Your work should do the talking. Extra work = extra money.
If it's really bad I just give an outrageous price to clean it. One of a couple of things happen then; 1. They say no thanks and that's fine with me as I didn't want to do it in the first place or 2. They pay it and at least then I know I'm being extremely well compensated for my misery. Detailing the interior is the quickest way to lose money and time if it's really horrible so I try and stay away from those at all costs.
That sounds like a bad business idea. If the price was already pre-arranged and you already started working on the car, calling back customer and asking for either more money or less work done will ALWAYS make you look bad in the eyes of the customer. I'll go the route outlined above - charge hourly and if you do give estimated price before you started working, try to account for the tough spots. Cheers!
I wholeheartedly agree. In any business, if you are good at what you do and you make sure the job is generally done to a higher standard, you deserve to get paid for your expertise. I probably would have called the customer before I spent the extra 4 hours and explained the situation to them. Then they would have told you how to proceed and everybody would have been happy in the end. Joe D
Just out of curiosity, how much did you make on the job? If you don't wanna post it up, just PM me. On that note, I start interiors @ $75 and work my way up. Size, degree of filth, etc. are what boosts the price.
Thanks for the tips, eveyrone. Slanguage, I charged him $115.00. He paid me $155. My interiors include a quick iexterior wash and wheel cleaning. He told me to raise my prices, that he'd pay anywhere between $150 to $180 for what I did... the problem with such a job, is that it ruins your day. essentially when a job is a pain like this, I can't do a second car that day unless I plan ahead and start at 6 am or so.
Like some have said and through personal experience, your best bet is to charge by the hour and estimate accordingly or slightly over-estimate if you're guessing it may take longer than expected.
i always and mean always ask to see the first if the customers says he/she has kids! i have had my share of 6 hour interior details. if they want a quote over the phone, that to me means they are shopping for price or know the interior is a disaster. so i will quote min. price to max. price. explaining that with out seeing the vehicle, i cant and wont give a set price. i also set the expectation when i see the car, some people think they can wait 8 years to clean an interior with 5 kids and it will come out like new.
When I was still 'detailing for dollars' I had a footnote on all my prices: "Prices indicate approximate cost for cleaning and/or correction of average issues. Should more extensive processes or time be required you will be contacted regarding the additional charges before any work is completed and given the option to opt out of the additional services should you chose to do so." In all the years I did that I can really only think of one customer who was upset by this practice. I quoted him $100 for the interior of his Mercedes which he described as "just a little dirty" in our conversations. Of course he had someone else drop it off so I couldn't discuss in person, but after vacuuming the interior and discovering rotten food under the seats, deep and obviously very old stains, and what appeared to be evidence someone had engaged in some lude activity in the back seat I contacted him to let him know that the interior fell well beyond the scope of the standard charges. I let him know for the quoted price all I would be doing is a light spot treatment and vacumming up/removing debris as it was not at all as he described and bordered on a health hazard given some of the things I found in the back seat. He wasn't too happy, but at a certain point you have to draw a line... its business afterall.
LOL that reminds me of a call i got about a year ago asking if i could get blood stains out!! i was like "human blood"?? the guy was like yeah, i had to take my friend to the ER after he got shot at a club. i was like well you know that is a bio hazard and would be very expensive and might not get all the stains out, no guarantee will be offered. he was like whats expensive to you, i said like $900, plus you have to pay for a disposable bio suit and breather. he was like why do you need all that stuff?? i was like no offense but i dont want to breath your friends blood pathogens, i dont know what he might have. he got kinda pissed and said i was rude. i said sorry and maybe he needed to contact a specialty company that cleans up crime scenes and said good bye. some people just dont have any common sense
Hey, has anyone memtioned yet that you should be charging by the hour oke: If a customer wants an exact quote then I go high. If I am able to accomplish what we were looking to do in a shorter amount of time then I will lower the price upon delievery. Never give estimates without seeing the vehicle in question :dupe:
I primarily detail gross minivans and other vehicles of the sort, with all sorts of nasty stains and stuff on the floors. I'm 17 and don't charge a ton for my details, but I don't ever claim I will get stains out. I say I do "minor stain removal". All of my details are a fixed price and I have a set amount of time to do them in, so people know not to expect their carpet to come out perfect. I will vacuum it and make sure there is no more dirt or food or whatever on the floor, but as far as getting the carpet immaculate...not gonna happen. I focus most of my efforts getting all the plastics and dashboard looking nice again. No one has ever once complained. Every person I've detailed for has been happy with the work I do. One person wanted just the inside of her Honda Pilot done. 3 kids, 3 dogs, 130K miles, never cleaned. I just managed a vacuum and a cleaning of all the interior plastics on it, in my opinion it was still dirty (but still 100x better than before), but I was only paid $30 to do it so I called it quits after that. In order to fully clean the interior the seats would have to be removed and to be honest, the carpet either extracted or replaced altogether, it was bad. But she was very happy with what I did, one of her kids got inside and said "it's like a new car!" I never claim to be able to do everything, and my customers don't expect me to, they know what to expect in 5 hours and for $55. But that's the only reason I have so many customers, several of them mentioned that I was cheaper than any of the other local detailers and that's why they brought their cars to me to begin with.
