Now, it’s well documented, if you’re in block management, that there is a race to the bottom. And it’s fast, painful, and people are getting hurt. Lease holders, properties are not being managed properly, because there’s this charge to charging less on the car, which ultimately will mean worse and poor services for lease holders. But who’s driving the race? Who’s steering the ship? Who’s pushing the race? Now, when I’ve gone out to tender and I spoke to lots of people when I’ve done this over the years, generally speaking, I found in my experience, customers want to pay less. They don’t actually necessarily value the service as much as you think. And whilst yes, agents might be undercutting each other to win the business, but if it’s being driven by this desire to pay less for something, I’ve had customers want to pay less five years later, but how can they pay less for something five years later?

Because labour and material cost goes up. So staffing costs, operational costs goes up, up, up. But yet they want to pay less. So this drive and race to the bottom, who’s driving it? Is it agents? Is it bad agents who just want to undercut and steal the business and just get more? And that’s what people say, but actually… Or is it being driven by this desire for the consumer to just have something cheaper for less money that’s less valuable? See, I think it’s that. I don’t think it’s just rogue agents. In fact, I think this rhetoric over rogue agents is just got to stop, because every time an agent makes a mistake, you hear some bullshit about whose fault it is, and I don’t agree. Because out of all the mistakes they might make, they’re making millions or thousands of right ones and good choices, and making good decisions.

And that is the balance that you should hear in terms of the story. And you don’t hear it. You just hear when they make a mistake, as if we’re all robots, when we’re not. We’re not driving the race to the bottom. We should be charging more. Definitely should be getting more for it. And value should be put on the service, not the cheapness and the low cost, because what are you expecting? What is someone expecting? So my view is the rate of the bonds being driven by the consumer, and that is a dangerous game.