How Low is Too Low?
By Kim Letus
There is a growing and increasingly disturbing trend polluting our industry. I like to refer to it as ‘low balling’.
After speaking to colleagues in various parts of upstate New York, it is clear that this is not a problem that is on the rise in my area alone. It is industry-wide, at least in New York. I’ve been watching servers who practice ‘low balling’ come and go, one after another, for years, but from what I’m seeing, it’s becoming more prevalent of late.
What is “Low Balling” in Process Serving?
Low balling occurs when new or minimally experienced servers try to attract new business by offering such low pricing that it is difficult to fathom how they could possibly do the work that is required to do a clean service without losing money. And the truth of the matter is, they probably can’t, especially long-term. By engaging in this type of activity, they hugely undercut pricing in an area. Certainly, those of us with established businesses with overhead can’t compete with that type of pricing, nor would we compromise quality and our reputations in order to be able to.
The Long Term Issues with Low Balling the Competition
Ultimately, these bargain-priced servers usually find that they can’t do the required work efficiently for any significant period of time at such low prices. Once their insanely low prices continue to attract more and more business, it becomes increasingly impossible to accommodate the added work without taking on more help. When they need to start paying additional people to keep up with the increased volume, they find that the low prices can’t work any longer. It’s simple mathematics.
In the meantime, they have had an adverse affect on other businesses and overall pricing in their area, as well as on their own clients. Many times, they simply disappear from the process serving landscape after wreaking havoc on the businesses of those of us who are in it for the long haul. It’s amazing to me that clients fall for this and put themselves in the position of compromising the quality of the service to save what amounts to a small sum of money, considering a bad service can tank an entire case.
We live in a capitalist society, and fair competition is the name of the game. My personal belief is that low balling is not fair competition, as the server is committing to do a job that he or she can’t possibly do thoroughly at such low prices. This more often than not results in the server cutting corners to get the work done and still turn a profit.
And that, my friends, is, in large part, how process servers as a whole ended up with a bad rep. This practice, in the long run, has ramifications that affect all of us.