How Carpet Cleaners Set Their Pricing

When a prospective client calls us at Linton's Carpet Cleaning about our services, one of the very first questions,
if not the first question is:

"How much do you charge."

And our answer is always: "It depends."

We will explain our answer a bit later in this article but we want to talk about how carpet cleaners set their prices, and why you have to be careful when you see these "too good to be true ads in your mail."

So How Do Carpet Cleaners Set Prices?

Most carpet cleaning companies set their prices using two methods:

1. Square footage of carpet to be cleaned.

2. Charging per room, with usually a maximum sq. foot allowance per room.

Which is the best method?

Well, it depends.

If a carpet cleaner is charging per square foot of carpet they are actually going to clean then that is a more fair and accurate form of pricing.

Let's look at an example:

A residential home with 2000 total square feet of carpet, but only 1000 square feet of that carpet is going to actually be cleaned.

If the carpet is not full of stains and/or pet urine, then the company is going to multiply what they charge per square foot, let's say .30 a square foot, by the number of square feet to be cleaned.

In this example the carpet cleaning price would be $300. It could be higher, it could be lower, we are only giving an example here of how square foot pricing works.

Let's Look At A Room Pricing Example

Let's say you have six rooms to be cleaned and the carpet cleaning company charges $50 per room with a square foot per room limit. In this case the charge would also be $300.

Now let's look at one other way carpet cleaners charge, but you rarely ever hear them talk about it.

It the hourly method. A carpet cleaner sets the amount of money they want to make per hour, gross, and multiply it by the amount of time they think it is going to take them to do the job. Hopefully they are planning on doing a good job when they calculate the time it is going to take them.

If a carpet cleaner wants to make $100 per hour, gross, and they think the job is going to take three hours, the charge will be $300.

So which method is best?

There isn't a best method! The best method is what works for the carpet cleaner and works for their
customers.

For MOST high-quality carpet cleaning companies the square foot pricing model is used. But there are some really good companies that also charge per room.

And there are some companies that charge per hour.

Most low-priced, bait-and-switch carpet cleaning companies use the per room pricing as their model.
You can look in your mail box every week and see these low-priced companies promoting their "specials."

There is nothing wrong with pricing per room; but pricing per room and not being honest with your
customer about the type of cleaning they are going to get is a problem.

For example: "Whole House Special for $99."

Seriously? Does anyone still think they are going to get a really good carpet cleaning job done for
that price? Maybe, if each room is made for an Umpa Lumpa. What if the whole house is 2000 square feet
of pretty dirty carpet?

Are they still only going to charge $99 to clean that carpet? Probably not, not even close!

The chances are REALLY high that "whole house special" is going to go from $99 to hundreds of dollars,
which might actually be the correct price to begin with. But you hired the company thinking you were
going to get the job done for $99 and now you find out it is going to be hundreds of dollars.

Chances are you are not going to be a happy camper.

Or, the company will honor their $99 "special" and YOU will get a pretty inferior carpet cleaning job done.

We want to make this clear: not all per room companies are bait-and-switch specialist, but far too many are.

The bottom line is that it is REALLY important to make sure your carpet cleaner clearly states the price they
are going to charge you, and that they honor their price while delivering good cleaning results.

So how do we price at Linton's Carpet Cleaning. We use a hybrid pricing method of square footage and the amount of time it is going to take to deliver great cleaning results.

If we just go by the square foot that would mean that the charge would be the same for 2000 sq. ft. or carpet that was fairly clean and 2000 sq. ft. of carpet that was heavily soiled and ladened with stains. That doesn't make sense.

So, for us, the best pricing model is square footage and time. This way we can give you a really accurate quote and then deliver you high-quality cleaning results - and you end up happy and we end up happy. Just like it should be.

At Linton's Carpet Cleaning we always honor our quotes and we give you a price BEFORE cleaning. And then we
deliver outstanding cleaning results for you - no matter how big or small the job is. Don't be fooled by
carpet cleaners that play pricing games.