My opinion on “fair trade” & “Comparative pricing”
“Without Prejudice”
I work as a humble ink cartridge and printer salesman, a job that I enjoy and a job that is highly technical in terms of the technologies involved and the application requirements of many customers.
We are very highly regarded as a technical company by our customers and by the industry at certain levels, including dye sublimation, edible, K3 wide format and desktop craft application printing. A very specialised subject.
My day is spent talking to customers to establish their requirements prior to offering a solution that fits their needs. Application surveys, machine model enquiries and so on. In many instances we spend time doing groundwork to achieve a sale of £15.00, with a 25% contribution.
At no time during the application survey do we charge, we make any profit that we make from the sale of products, installation services and future product services as yet undefined. If we get a product or a service wrong, we rectify it at our cost.
If I was to apply just how I have been treated by solicitors in terms of charge rates, I would change our invoice structure to our retail and wholesale customers, it would go something like this:
1) Send an invoice for £20.00 outlining our terms and conditions in the event that they buy.
2) Send an invoice for £40.00 for advising which cartridge or service they may require.
3) send an invoice for £300.00 for the time that it took me to establish printer model, or application requirements
4) Send an invoice for £3.50 for the required cartridge
5) send an invoice for £20.00 packaging and postage time and postage costs.
Of course the customer might object a tad and even have a stiff word or two to say about it as he mentioned a famous brand of clothing before the word off! Simply put, no customer on this planet would accept this level, or method of charge, from a humble ink cartridge salesman. So why do solicitors get away with it!
My “Fair Trade” solution to this and a practice that I shall actively promote from this point on, is to charge as outlined above, plus multiply the cartridge cost by 10 to £35.00. whenever a solicitor’s company asks for prices. If they do not like it, the clothing brand and off springs to mind.
To be clear, based on my experiences, I do not wish to and will not deal with them! which is my choice.