Rain / snow affect holiday season cleaning ?

It's been a calm December for me, November's total is a little lower than usual, how are business with you guys ? It's funny that when it rains that's when we're booked solid, too bad it only rains a few days in a year here, lol.

I wish I could say the same, but every job I had scheduled for the 3 rainy days we've had this past week have either canceled or rescheduled on me.........really a bad month for this kind of sillyness.

Steady but the volume of jobs is lower, due to winter and holidays. Always been like that. Ave 2 jobs a day.

Recent warming period has helped increase volume, but the average tickets are a little lower so it is a wash.

Guess it's good as time as any to ask.............

What is your response when a customer says "But it'll be Raining/Snowing that day", and "What about it drying"?

Usually, for myself around here, the rain comes as more of a surprise. And I'm not sure why, but lately it's been scaring them away, with canceling and rescheduling last min.

In the past, Most customers, unless older I haven't had a big problem with this. But so far this year, the rain is scaring everyone away!

November was great! I was so busy that I almost booked up December until Christmas. As soon as Thanksgiving was over phones went dead. Thank God I had scheduled so much before hand! Overall a significant improvement over last year.

My wife is home now, with the biz..we were biting our nails, but so far we are doing very well, carpet is bringing in more this winter than ever before.
We are very thankful, as we knew it was going to be a little scary

Dave, usually when customer asks if the rain will affect drying time, I tell them yes it will but only by a couple extra hours, most are OK with it and I also tell them to turn the heat up a bit and use any fans they have, so far the weather hasn't affect the cancellations but I notice a LOT more price shoppers, especially during the holiday season, that's a little bit unusual for me, as for the total revenues, it's about the same with less volume, which is not a bad thing since it drops my costs of running the business, I guess I'm hoping to raise the calls to schedule ratio a bit and it didn't happen. Oh well.

Actually, besides concern about longer drying times (which I combat with blowers), the biggest excuse customers have to cleaning in the rain is, "Everything is going to get tracked in". And I'm sure if I made that one easy by saying "You can take off your shoes", then those people that are anti cleaning while it's raining would just have another excuse.

I think I'm just in the PITA raining customer cycle now, and hopefully soon it will swing the other way where no one cares if it's raining.

The great thing is the rains are finally done and the weather forecast upper 60s and lower 70s for the weekend, and high 70s for monday through wednesday, tomorrow we have 8 jobs so far, hope to get a couple more same day services and monday and tuesday only have a couple of customers so far, still below normal for this time of year even though it's been bigger jobs and higher $$ amounts, how about you guys ?

Out here it is all determined by the temperatures. If it is sunny and relatively warm, business is decent, but when it is gloomy and cold.....phone will not ring.

Temps will be in the in the low single digits at night for the next 10 days and daily hovering in the low teens. Translation....no residential work at all.

It can really break a business that isn't prepared for it. Not only do you have to have cash reserves, but you have to find commercial AND be able to avoid equipment damage due to the cold stresses. Fail at any of those 3 and you will be delivering pizza for a living. I've already seen an uptick in the equipment for sale on the local Craiglist listings from those that went under.

As of today, it's officially went dead here, for me anyways..........even tho it's sunny and 40-60 deg (until the next big flood job comes in, I've done 3 in the last 30 days). It seems it's fairly normal to die a few days before Xmas, because a lot of people are panicked and busy with holiday prep.

Davey Cracker wrote:As of today, it's officially went dead here, for me anyways..........even tho it's sunny and 40-60 deg (until the next big flood job comes in, I've done 3 in the last 30 days).   It seems it's fairly normal to die a few days before Xmas, because a lot of people are panicked and busy with holiday prep.

We never book the day before a holiday as 90% of the time customers cancel due to time constraints. As I stated- thank god I booked up December before Thanksgiving, phones went dead, maybe took 5-10 calls in all of December so far. Still I have been working to exhaustion almost everyday as it will get very slow in Jan,Feb and March. By the end of the day on 12/23 I will close shop for the year as nobody wants anything cleaned between Christmas and New Year. I have been saving funds for this eventuality. It will be nice to take a little break and let the old body recoup a bit.

We hit major slow down about a week ago....

Been calling my own phone to make sure it still works....LOL....

But, I am still finding a lot of things to keep me busy!

So much work in the shop and office that has gone neglected.

I also schedule myself off starting Jan1- Jan 25....me the wife and the Mini Schnauzer and Schoodle are going to Florida to get out of the cold!

The son in law is running the show, and I am going to work on my Experience presentation a that I will be speaking at down there in Clearwater Beach again the end of April....

It's just time to start enjoying the slow time now at my age and go south

Wouldn't you know as soon as I scheduled this, I have been getting calls for "we would like to schedule and appointment the middle of January .....WHAT? SERIOUS? and they have been BIG jobs....rock on!!!

I might leave town more often

Mark Saiger
www.saigers.com
"Bring on the Blue!"

Florida sounds really good to me right now.....jealous!

Enjoy the vacation Mark.

milspec6 wrote:Florida sounds really good to me right now.....jealous!

Enjoy the vacation Mark.

Thanks

A very slow carpet cleaning month. This week I was finally called by a customer who had pierced there hot water pipe with a screw while hanging a tv wall mount. Besides getting the carpet job I replaced the copper pipe with new t's and sodered and sheet rocked and textured for them. While sodering the pipe I realized I left my phone in the vehicle. I waled the 15 feet to get my phone and realized the passenger door was unlocked. The phone was gone. In a 2 minute time frame my phone was taken, diaper bag and sons backpack with 3 expensive school books. On the way to the Job around the corner was a large elecdtrical box with the words Tis the Season written in black graffitti. This was an expensive job.. Today I will return to clean the remainder of the house, with someone on duty watching my vehicle of course, instead of leaving a purse filled with bass fishing lures tied to my seat.

brianbenaiah wrote: A very slow carpet cleaning month.  This week I was finally called by a customer who had pierced there hot water pipe with a screw while hanging a tv wall mount.  Besides getting the carpet job I replaced the copper pipe with new t's and sodered and sheet rocked and textured for them.  While sodering the pipe I realized I left my phone in the vehicle.  I waled the 15 feet to get my phone and realized the passenger door was unlocked.  The phone was gone.  In a 2 minute time frame my phone was taken, diaper bag and sons backpack with 3 expensive school books.  On the way to the Job around the corner was a large elecdtrical box with the words Tis the Season written in black graffitti.  This was an expensive job..  Today I will return to clean the remainder of the house, with someone on duty watching my vehicle of course, instead of leaving a purse filled with bass fishing lures tied to my seat.

That sucks! There aren't many things worse than a thief. A gutless, pos, thief.

I've had my jeep broken into 3x, my van once, and my garage once in the last 10 years...and I live in a nice quiet town. What you might find interesting is that every one of those thefts occurred within 2 weeks of Christmas.

It is one of the reasons that I don't care much for the holiday season as it seems to bring out the worse in many people instead of the best. Not to mention that you have to wait for 20 minutes to buy a gallon of milk with all the lines at check out.

Being a guy who has to have the van running while I work, I am extra careful to avoid thieves. All doors are locked, windows covered, and I have even put a mannequin in the seat a few times in the "iffy" neighborhoods. Maybe the fact that my silencer is blown out is helping keep thieves away this year....it sure keeps everything away (people, birds, dogs, squirrels, mice, boats, planes).

The carpet turned out nice for the customer on thievery lane. lol He was kind enough to watch the van as I cleaned the carpets. He said his Honda was hot wired and stolen in the same spot, along with many of his family's vehicles in the pas were broken into also. Glad that jobs finished.

brianbenaiah wrote:The carpet turned out nice for the customer on thievery lane. lol   He was kind enough to watch the van as I cleaned the carpets.  He said his Honda was hot wired and stolen in the same spot, along with many of his family's vehicles in the pas were broken into also.  Glad that jobs finished.

Sad that there are so many thieves running around these days, at least the job finished well.

I hope this event doesn't sour your month, hopefully you are "thief-free" for a long time.

brianbenaiah wrote:The carpet turned out nice for the customer on thievery lane. lol   He was kind enough to watch the van as I cleaned the carpets.  He said his Honda was hot wired and stolen in the same spot, along with many of his family's vehicles in the pas were broken into also.  Glad that jobs finished.

Sorry to hear about your loss, sux being a victim of theft.

Was this in South Central LA or Compton?.........Just so we know what 'Hood to avoid!

Modesto lol. Thanks everyone for your knowledge and all the wonderful wisdom given on this lounge, it has greatly taught me to do a good job cleaning customers carpets and learning this trade. It could have left a "sour in my mouth", but it can be replaced. Have a wonderful CHRISTMAS And A Happy New Year.

Wow, I used to live in Merced and was serving central valley area including Modesto for a couple of years.
Sorry for your loss, how long have you been living and working down there ? There's another member here that live and work down that way too, pulido's carpet care I think.

Awesome, Thanks dp1, Davey. I have been traveling from Idaho to Central valley since 2001 evangelizing and taking care of my customers and have only had a few sawzalls stolen. I just seems to be getting worse. Fransico is awesome and helped me this year to gain more cfm's on my unit and blessed me with some nice 2 inch hose, stair tool, silver bullet and Soils and oils.

Mark Saiger wrote:We hit major slow down about a week ago....

Been calling my own phone to make sure it still works....LOL....

But, I am still finding a lot of things to keep me busy!

So much work in the shop and office that has gone neglected.

I also schedule myself off starting Jan1- Jan 25....me the wife and the Mini Schnauzer and Schoodle are going to Florida to get out of the cold!

The son in law is running the show, and I am going to work on my Experience presentation a that I will be speaking at down there in Clearwater Beach again the end of April....

It's just time to start enjoying the slow time now at my age and go south

Wouldn't you know as soon as I scheduled this, I have been getting calls for "we would like to schedule and appointment the middle of January .....WHAT?  SERIOUS? and they have been BIG jobs....rock on!!!

I might leave town more often

Mark Saiger
www.saigers.com
"Bring on the Blue!"

Cool Mark, enjoy Florida, we went to Orlando twice and always enjoy it, we're going to Oregon and Washington the beginning of January, for a week, then probably Hawaii in March or April depending on available time and how business is going, if it slows down to a point where there's nothing else to do then it's time to go.
I always find things to do too, whether it's equipments maintenance, paperwork and taxes, but usually manage to get everything done by February.