1. The savings coupons don't really save you any money. If I offer a coupon for $200 off an exterior, you might want to ask yourself: "$200 off what"? The answer isn't so simple. Pricing a job on an exterior (for example) is based on the metric of square feet of living space. The metric is used because it is a reliable benchmark for estimating materials and labor costs for most exteriors. If we use square feet of wall space it will be hard to measure it for every single job. Assuming a surface is in good condition, the price per square americanvisionwindows foot is fairly consistent to give us a reliable estimate. Usually the price is very tight with no wiggle room for discounts. You might think you're getting a lot of savings, but you're not. 2. The "as low as $400 for an exterior" is a lure. If you really want to hunt down customers that want the illusion of great value for rock-bottom prices, look no further in the arsenal of marketing gimmicks than this one. We price up and then discount down with the coupon, or we price down then go up with the lure. Either way, painting a home has a fairly set price if a contractor has bills to pay like you do. 3. Name recognition doesn't guarantee we're better. We may invest heavily in advertising to give you a perception that we must be good, then pass the costs down to you. However, there are mom--and-pops that may be just as good as the popular ones. The smaller ones may give you more personalized service than the big-chain ones with more bureaucracy and middlemen. 4. Most of our warranties are worthless. They're too short in length of coverage. Problems, if do they arise, usually start after that small time period. Many of the warranties insist that you supply the paint for our mistakes. We have to insist, and rightly so, that paint peeling off a surface is not our responsibility if it is caused by something beyond our control, but we will lose a lot of money if we reasonably backed up our ineptitude with a full repaint. 5. Some of us aren't even painters. We did paint our mom's kitchen once. Unless we've shown proof we've been in business as painting contractors for years, and only painting contractors, you might get a "handyman" who does everything on your house but nothing of professional quality. It takes a painter about five years to perform quality painting and achieve serious proficiency with a brush for that "professional look." To this day, I must confess that as a painting contractor, I still struggle with certain types of paint. Well, there are over 200 systems of preparation and painting that exist. I still haven't mastered them all. 515exteriors 6. We have no choice but to cut corners if you want the rock-bottom price. There are so many ways to make your job not worth a dollar much less the price you want to pay if we go down the "price-only" route. We can try, for example, the following routes: No primer on walls, cheaper paint put in high-quality paint cans, applying an obscenely tiny coat of paint that will fade easily in a few months, and not caulking a thing. Zinc-rich primer on nail holes is a no-no. We'll let the rust show through. We have so many other ways to cut corners, but this article, and our personal embarrassment at such revelation, doesn't allow for us to go through each one. 7. Up to half your price may go a subcontractor. If a job costs $1000, we may keep 50%, then hire a subcontractor who will give you $500 worth of work for $1000. We have to cut corners, you know. If you want to go to a depot store and ask them to paint your house, you're going to help yourself to a subcontractor who gets a small chunk of what you pay the mass depot store. 8. I purchase expensive memberships into professional organizations to make you think I'm special. I'll even let you know about my memberships. All you have to do is pay up, attend a few boring workshops, and pay up even more. We do get a nice little icon on our web site. Supposedly I'm keeping up with the latest technologies. However, the same information can be obtained for free from the paint manufacturer. 9. The "awesome work" we did may just last a year, if that much. Yes, we all know that first impression are the best impressions. If you like what we did at first sight, without figuring out how long it will last (and you won't), we'll get you hooked easily for future work. When the paint starts peeling in a few months; or the color fades too quickly due to a tiny coat; or the rust on the nails we didn't prime begins to show though, you won't think it's our fault. ttdownloads After all, no paint job lasts forever. It must be some natural wear-and-tear force at work. Because your first impression was that we did a "great" job, though hardly lasting, you will still end up liking us. 10. The XYZ paint we use may not be the best. We may get some advertising space on their web site if we buy so much of their paint every month. We won't tell you that, of course. Maritza Combes is a licensed painting contractor and customer consultant in the Tampa, Fl area. Her web site contains information such as