We recently noticed that one of our clients stopped sending us orders. I tried for a couple of weeks to contact them (not particularly hard) and did eventually get ahold of their vendor manager. I was concerned that there had been an issue with our services, it turns out this was not the case.

The had found another vendor with cheaper prices. The funny thing is they came to us, because their previous vendor had been taking too long to fill orders. Long and short of it, they wanted very low pricing at the time of us taking them on. I worked out pricing which wasn't what they had hoped for but they did spring for it, one year later - they drop us for lower rates.

The kicker was that they asked if we could contact our vendors, etc to see if they could come down on THEIR prices so that we could all have better rates. I told him that this was basically the equivalent of me going up to my in-house staff and asking them to take a pay decrease and I would never do that. I have a hard time thinking with who would take the work for such a low price... $40 for a COS as a flat fee across the boards in a full state, no copy costs? 24 hour turn around time (not 24 - 48 hours).

This comes on the heals of getting a call asking for 60 year deed chains for whopping $40 a search fee. I had to hold myself back from laughing. Very nice gentleman calling to inquire regarding a bulk project that was being done nationwide, I DID give him an idea of what a 60 year deed chain would entail and how $40 was NOT a realistic price.

I can tell from other posts that those connected up to this site keep an eye on realistic pricing so that we don't all end up totally out the bottom but WHO takes that kind of work?

I don't mind in the slightest that I occasionally lose clients or turn away work, it just baffles me.