When You Don't Have Any Idea About Service Prices, Try This Trick

Recently, I bought a Wakefit mattress for my main cot, and the cotton mattress on that cot became idle.

My cotton mattress is way too bulky… like almost 70+ Kg.

We cannot easily move or lift that mattress.

This time, we decided to split that single mattress into 2 mattresses for the brand new cots that recently came.

We don’t know the recent price for the cotton cleaning and making cotton mattresses. Yesterday, one bed-making team came in an auto we showed and discussed the pricing.

The price they quoted was almost too high.

All they need to do is split the single to double mattress & clean the cotton. It’s just a labour work.

When I inquired about the price, those guys told me the cost on a Per KG basis, not a lump sum basis…

At first, they quoted 150 rs per kg… after listening to their price, my dad simply quoted 50 rs per kg.

After some back and forth, they finally agreed to do ₹60 per kg, but at the last moment, they didn’t agree to stitch the bed according to our requirements, and those guys left.

I simply analysed how much time it takes for them to do it.

I know it won’t take more than 1 day for a single person to finish the task. Calculating based on the Per Kg basis will cost us more. I told my dad we better structure the deal on a lump sum basis.

Today, one guy came. I asked their price, and luckily, he quoted on a lump sum basis only… This guy quoted ₹3,000.

I started quoting from ₹1500.

Finally, we agreed to ₹2600. I know it will come to this range when I quoted ₹1500, and I’m fine with this. After clothes and all…, we happily paid the service provider ₹3000.

If we agreed to the first service provider guy, I could easily paid almost double. That too if we calculated for our agreed price.

Thankfully, we rejected the first and finalised the second.

The strategy I recommend is, if you don’t know the pricing of any material, first one or two times reject by quoting a very, very low price and know the price range.

Once you understand the market rate, you can finalise the deal.

These days, some service providers quote the price almost 4 times more than the market rate.

This is not the first time we have dealt with this. While we bought the drainage slab, a similar thing happened.

Any weak bargainer reduces the price 1 or 2 times than the quoted price, and sellers happily agree to such a price.

We lose money if you quote the price without knowing the market rate.

So keep that in mind.

For reference, I kept track of all my house construction expenses in an Excel sheet. Almost 98% of the expenses are tracked…

Sometimes, you may be unable to track individual items, but it still contains useful information. If this is something you are interested in, visit the below link to know more details:

https://houseconstruction.pkarun.com/our-house-construction-expenses/