These complaints aren’t just levied by consumers but other detailing business owners, and I will address both parties.
This is a story some small business owners can relate to. I was out and I ran across this person that casually knew me. He saw my logo and asked if I do detailing. I told him I am the owner of a detailing business. He begin to talk to me like I had showed up asking if McDonalds was hiring. “Come on Tuesday, I have some cars for you.” Aside from that not being fair to the individuals I committed my time to on that day, I tried to explain (while being talked over) my process for booking with me. His response, “you must not want to work!”
This person was being (is) a jerk. But let’s delve deeper here. He could not fundamentally wrap his mind around the fact that I am a business owner, in addition to being a skilled technician in a industry with various types of services for different groups of consumers. He could not get around his prejudice of it being a basic cleaning and that I was some proverbial ‘bum’ off the street looking for work. People who provide haircuts or photographers etc deal with animosity like this. For business owners reading this, there are a lot of people you are mistakenly trying to appease that guy that I described.
In terms of basic decency. It goes beyond what YOU or YOUR PEERS think something is worth. Even if you are right and so many people in the industry are universally wrong, I would not go to your source of income and count your money. Many of the people bragging about expensive places going out of business, fail to see the irony in their many complaints of “where has the quality gone!” They also like to say with such surprise, “I had a guy who did all of this for much less but he stopped showing up.” As a consumer as well, I am proud to remind and encourage others that accountability needs to include consumers as well.
I will speak to business owners (officially or illegitimately) specifically in the automotive detailing industry. Disparaging attacks suggesting peers are charging too much, screams jealousy and self hate. Disparaging remarks about what customers are allegedly entitled to for basic paint correction and ceramic coating services, or interiors, are still common. I am bombarded with comments in my newsfeed, ‘ripping off’ and ‘stealing.’ The use of emotional manipulation within the industry screams, “if I am not competent or confident to charge more than no one else can!” I could go with in an industry with no standards, that these people are in no position to act as experts on the matter. I could go with a reminder to look at other industries, to see if we are really that hard on consumers. Most people who get that you make sacrifices going into business for long term wealth, would say for those only wanting to be ‘reasonable to all customers’ should work at McDonalds. But I did not start a business because I could not work with others.
I want to start by saying, yes from one perspective you can look at me as biased as a business owner of a niche industry. You could also say I have empathy and a overall understanding many willfully fail to acknowledge. As a child growing up in a middle class lifestyle, I never felt entitled to a haircut. I started detailing my own car, because I had an innate understanding that it is a luxury service. Whether a business succeeded or not were ultimately the consequence of business owners. But I never made affordability anything but a personal problem.