Another type of Bait and Switch

Last week I reviewed the most commonly understood method of "bait and switch" advertising done by carpet cleaners.

There is, however, another sort of marketing misrepresentation going on in our industry, and I feel it is as damaging as the more conventional low price bait and switch tactics that we are more familiar with.

When a cleaner sells their service as a very high price, and sells the higher price as being of more value because of extra steps that are provided, or extra services that are rendered, but the cleaner does not deliver the promised services, that too is a type of "bait and switch", is it not?

Let's look at this scenario:

"Rolls Royce Carpet Cleaning" sells carpet cleaning at a premium price by promising that the following steps will be taken:

Prevacuuming
Preconditioning
Prescrubbing with a rotary scrubber or counter rotating brush machine
Hot water extraction with soft water
Corners and edges cleaned with a special hand tool
Carpet Groomed
Speed Drying

All too often cleaners who sell the benefits of such multistep cleanings end up only providing 2 or at most 3 of these steps.

When someone pays a very high price for such a service, and when the results end up not being any better than a more moderately priced company, they will eventually find themselves going back to lower priced cleaners, and likely resenting the price that they paid for the service that was ultimately less than what was promised.

In these tough economic times, consumers will look for value in their purchases of services, and will quickly drop service providers who they feel aren't delivering value to them.