He can do what he wants with a quote, undercutting is perfectly legal. The inverse is not though, price fixing is illegal.
I never understood this attitude, if the business you operate can't compete with hobbiest undercutting then the bussiness has serious issues. To charge a premium you need to proove the additional costs are justified, if you can't do that then you are charging too much for the market and need to lower your costs.
Do you think supermarkets should all artificially keep prices raised and stop Aldi doing business because it is undercutting them?
It is a freemarket, if someone or some business can charge lower to secure more business they have every right to do that.the primary goal of a business is to generate as much profit as possible, that may mean lowering prices to attract more business while streamlining operations to reduce production costs.
You miss the point. Amateurs are often charging minimal amounts that if they was paying PI and 3rd party liability cover, as any responsible person on site should be, plus paying their income tax legally, national insurance, having enough to take time off for a holiday/sickness, then you can't survive charging what the amateurs do.
I'm not saying it's illegal, I am saying, think of the moral aspects of what you're doing by undercutting people who live from that work.
Yes it's a free market, but they can only charge less as they are often not legally declaring income so not paying tax or NI for it, they don't need to value their time highly as they often have another job that pays for holiday and sick pay. If they had to pay what the full timers pay then they couldn't make a profit on that either.
People subsidising income with alternative work, in my opinion, should have enough morals to do so fairly, and not using 2nd full time jobs to undercut those who need to charge more to survive.
As to your hobbyist vs full time business the differences in costs are clear.
The hobbyist as I said, is often not declaring the income, so not paying tax on it, nor are they paying the correct NI for self employment, they have a 2nd job that subsidises their living costs, holiday pay, sick pay. They often have no Professional Indemnity cover, or 3rd Party Liability cover.
The full time self employed guy will have correct cover, be having to pay tax and NI on the earnings, have to be earning enough to be able to cover some kind of holiday pay, or sick pay.
If you can't see what harm the hobbyist does for the pros then you are totally blind.
It has also skewed the market entirely, and it's not uncommon to see people looking to hire somebody and pay them by allowing them to use it as portfolio work, this has become common place since students started offering to do work for free for their portfolio. It is short sighted and damages the market for all those involved, apart from the hobbyist earning a few beers at the expense of the guy trying to buy his dinner for the next week.
For the record, I am also against the tactics used by supermarkets to put local businesses out of operation. The hobbyist argument is just an extension of this in my opinion.
. Management is worth more than the design if using prefabs.
