i understand what you are saying paul, but if you were getting a quote and one guy quoted you double what you were quoted from someone else, when that guy comes knocking on your door and says the quote is now 3 times what the other guys are offering to do it for, for a job that you don't really need doing, what would you say?

i can understand also if he came round and said "look, we are free this week and, as we didn't hear from you, wondered if you were still looking for someone to do the work" i may have reconsidered

the guy who did our garden toiled and sweated for 3 days solid, 9 hours a day and we paid him £45 a day because he negotiated it up from £40 a day as he bought his own food

our garden is 800 square foot and he had to dig out 2 trees as well, but then, on the 3rd day, he asked if he could sow the grass and come abck every few days to tend to it like he does for our neighbour for a few quid a visit

so we pay him a fiver a week and he comes round and does a bit of here and there and gets rid of some weeds, well worth the money i would say, but if he came in the first day and said "i'll charge you £500 to do the garden we might have had second thoguhts about it

he gave us a day rate and said it might take him 5 or 6 days so we were chuffed he done in it 3

if you price yourself out of the market then you have to charge a lot more to do less work, rather than charge a bit less and be busy all the time is what i've found to be the case in my neck of the woods

but as for spending money, now everyone has their flat screen telly's and dvd recordered and sky hd boxes and playbox wee's, no one needs to go out and spend lots of money buying the sam things again so the slump is going to hit the shops unless you can afford to spend spend spend, which, lets be honest, not a large proportion of us can do in these unsettling times