I got an email from an old friend at a big company I've worked for for 20 years. She wanted to know why our prices in a particular county had gotten so high (with regard to commercial work). I'm posting part of my reply here as food for thought:
While [the county in question] is on line (to an extent), any commercial work or full searches must be done at the courthouse and the person I trust there is an old-timer and knows her worth. We have not raised our prices on residential orders in 20 years.... And that's pretty much across the board for all independents and vendor managers. I think what's happened is that all of us independents are tired of getting leftovers. Either companies are doing the work in house and only farming out the crap, or the big nationwide dealers are sending their work to India and we STILL get left with the crap!
If all we're going to get is crap from now on (and that is indeed the case) then dammit, we're going to charge accordingly.
I hope you understand I'm not blaming you or [the company]! It is just the way of this world now. But a lot of us have taken a long, hard look at our bottom line and decided that if we are going to be the creme de la creme specialists in this field and only do the work that no one else can do, then the prices have to reflect that. We can't be Walmart anymore. We can't compete in that field anyway. So we'll be Whole Foods instead.
to post a reply:
login - or -
register