Stop appliance genocide

[bgadow]

Yes, this is precisely the problem. The price of bottom-of-the-line major appliances hasn't really budged in decades, along with many other goods. At the grocery store they hold the price down by making the container smaller but you can't get by with a smaller washing machine...

One of the problems I'm facing in my small business is that cash customers expect things to cost what they did 10, 20, even 30 years ago. I'd love to accomodate them but the cost of labor/overhead makes it impossible. Brutal competition (all of us in my line of work are well below capacity, and hungry) means that pricing is cutthroat, so none of us are making a decent profit. One shop has apparently decided to just maximize profits on the work they do, never mind if they lose a good percentage of the work. In the last week I've pulled in three jobs that they bid w-a-a-a-y high, and I was still able to make a decent profit in each case. One example, car needed a blower motor resistor. $25 part, my markup is about $10, takes 2 minutes to install, I didn't even charge her labor since she is a good customer. She had just come from that other shop that wanted to charge her over $300 for the same exact job, including a $100 "diagnostic charge".

Sorry, getting off topic here...