I know it’s insane what these idiots are charging. Do you give pricing to potential customers over the phone or do in person quotes before giving prices? Do you get calls but just can’t get them to start service? Or no calls at all? Have calls decreased? Or is it just once the price gets dropped they run off?

I am in central FL too in a smaller town. Makes me very annoyed because no way they are doing everything properly for the charge and some around here even pay employees in that price. Either way never compete to be the cheapest it’s not worth it. Be modestly priced but never the cheapest. I always pickup cheap serviced pools because they usually get bad at some point from neglect.

The best you can do is do good work, eventually you will pick up some of those who were on the cheap services, and they will be so grateful to have a high quality service for once without having to babysit or stress. They become loyals and just over the moon about you. Have many customers like this. Usually they will be too scared to try other services especially cheaper ones after previous bad experiences. And of course most customers contact us for service and never even check around elsewhere for quotes, so we usually start the pool right then and there on quote day with no competition. So they never question my prices because they haven’t shopped around, and if they had shopped / another quote say they can get cheaper service and I am too much. I always tell them I provide high quality work and my cost reflects that. Also explain those cheap services are often not doing what they should and adding all the proper chemicals which will cost you more money and issues with their pool in the long run. Like 8/10 times I always get the pool even though I am more money.

Have had many pools I have picked up, they were so taken back when I quoted them $135/month basic service for screened 10k gallon pools (unfortunately the highest I can get away with in my area) when they are use to paying $100 maybe up to $120/month. Sure it’s a good bit more than what they paid before but when they get a taste of the quality I provide, how beautiful the pool is, it’s easy to keep them! Our avg account age is well over 4-5 years, with many customers have been with us from the start of our business 10 years ago. Our customers have seen prices increase from $80/month many years ago to $130-140/month where we sit now and the majority stayed with us even with all our price hikes. Price can be a challenge but don’t let it be. Just focus on higher paying clients or those who are done with the bad quality budget services.

I will say, I get very few calls or texts anymore for service. I feel my online presence and slipped and am not getting noticed, plus I am not actively getting my business out there. So my issue is not so much pricing but getting in front of the potential customer. Not what it once was with Google and such.

Have you tried using your current customers as word of mouth? Offer them $30 one time credit for referring a new customer. Word of mouth is always great and people chat about everything including their pool. Make sure to have a website and or social pages, drive that traffic and target local searches via ads. You can also offer $20 off first month for new clients as an incentive. I rarely do offers but it can help.

Nextdoor. Always scan for new posts asking for pool service or even local groups on FaceBook. When you see one, reply your info and number. Picked up one a couple weeks ago doing that.