That's the contention, you can't bid lower than nothing, but neither party were supposed to bid nothing. They were both supposed to put forward a bid for the contracts and the smallest one would win the contract.

Like I said in another thread it's not a viable idea to take everything away for free that's not how these industries work, because if you can't sell it, you have to pay to get shot of it.

It seems yesterdays ep really has split the forum.

Watching it last night I could not believe the rubbish coming out of Susan's mouth and even more surprised to hear Nick saying she was right. She tried to confuse her team and make a simple task complicated.

There were two types of rubbish .The stuff with no resaleable value where you quoted how much you would charge to remove it.
Then you had 'rubbish' like the office furniture which had a resaleable value. For this you quoted how much you would charge to remove and how much you were willing to give them for the resaleable items.

I'm amazed how Susan could not understand this but will have to watch the programme a second time to see if I'm missing something regarding Susan and Nicks take on the task.

Trust me, you are not missing anything. I think everyone has become confused with it.

One minute LS is saying in this industry they are providing a service to take the rubbish away so should charge. Then at the end he was saying it's a great idea to offer them money!

What annoys me about LS is if they had failed to sell it, he would have mocked them saying 'Who sets up a business and does everything for free?'

Im pretty sure in the past there have been tasks set up where people have tried the same thing, failed and then been mocked for being stupid.

Exactly! He got it really wrong. All LS care's about is results no matter how they go about getting it even if it goes against the premise of the task!

Agreed, that's what you should do if winning the contract is more important than everything else. But it isn't.


Except that Zoe's team would have spent so much time on this contract that they couldn't do other ones, and the other team would have been free to do other contracts. And those other contracts could be more lucrative.

The only reason to prioritise the given contract is if you think it's going to be more lucrative than normal. However, there's not much reason to think that. In the past, contracts provided by the production team have been a poisoned chalice - too much work for not enough money (eg selling bread to hotels last year). Even if it is a fair task, you know you are competing with the other team. If we agree being paid £50 is fair, and the other team plays hardball and goes free, and you pay £50 to undercut them, you are actually getting paid £100 less than the job is worth. You are probably better off finding your own contract, for which you won't have to compete with the other team, and so for which you can charge a full (or at least fair) price.

That the contract turned out not be especially lucrative was confirmed at the end, when the other team got it but only won by £6.

Consider it this way: had Helen followed your logic, guessed Zoe would go free, and offered £50 to be sure of winning it, everything would have panned out the same, except at the end Helen would have £50 less. So she'd have lost the task by £44.

Depends if he has learnt to tell luck from thinking it through, and now has more data to make a judgement. Susan may have spotted a distinction between rubbish and saleable chairs, but she couldn't articulate it. and ends up sounding as if she is making the opposite point, or doesn't understand anything. Melody adopted the same logic as Zoe did. The only one who steered her way through he decisions was Helen. she looks like she has luck and/or judgement aand/or instinct. But Helen was lucky that Zoe hadn't offered money for the chairs , or Zoe would have added the profit on them to her total.

Yes i was confused by the editing , whereby Susan was made out to be correct and Zoe wron which wasnt the case. Zoe did lose the plot a bit with her though. Susan can only play on being the poor wee me one for so long .

And this is the thing, lets give Susan the benefit of the doubt. Lets pretend she fully understood everything. She had every opportunity to explain herself when Zoe said 'Am I missing something here?' But she didnt. Therefore regardless of anything else, Susie must carry the can because the team carried on a losing path because she couldnt get across a VERY simple point. If Im on a train with the train driver and he misses the red signal but I notice it and say nothing .......... should I get off scot free and get praised because even though I said nothing, at least I saw the red signal and understood that we should have stopped? Doesnt do much good as the train ploughs into the back of another does it?

Susan had a very simple point to make and she didnt do it. To mine that either makes her stupid for not understanding the concept in the first place or stupid for not being able to get across a very basic business concept to the other girls.

So take your pick of which particular stupid Susan showed, cause either way .. it wasnt genius and certainly didnt deserve to be applauded.

Nobody's saying take everything away for free. You look at the specific jobs and make the calls on those. Taking away the pub junk for free was a good call. Paying for the furniture would be a good call.

And, once more, I have direct experience of turning a healthy profit by doing this. No matter how many times people say that it's impossible to turn a profit like that, I can personally attest that it isn't. As, for that matter, can Helen.

It's probably worth bearing in mind that real life doesn't operate to arbitrary rules.

Helen wasn't paying over heads.

But it didn't take a long time, though. The team arrived to collect the furniture at 6PM, and end of trading was 7.30. It earned them £300. The total amount of money earned, before deductions, was £900(ish). So 1 1/2 hours work equalled a third of their income. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

My company does, so I'm not really sure how you think that counters my experience.

I'm not talking about your over heads. I'm talking about the task in the show. What they showed was not a full representation as to how a business runs. Helen may have won the task but in business you don't give something away for nothing. They should make it so that over heads and stuff factor into the apprentice then we could see who really has a viable business model my bet is hardly anyone and that goes for previous series too.

They also made it clear from the industry expert you charge for taking stuff away.

There's scrap iron gypsies around our area that will happily take away scrap metal for nothing, because they know they will sell it and make money. They wouldn't just pick up any old crap for nothing.

So, if you agree that she had no overheads, then why is how she acted wrong? She made the best deal for the situation she was in.


You do if there's a profit in it.


Actually, he said that he would have paid for it, but that you have to assess each case on an individual basis and make the call that's right in the situation. And as I've said several times, you can easily turn a profit by either not charging or by paying to take stuff away, as long as you get the right stuff.


You should get them to pay you for it. They will.


The furniture wasn't any old crap. It was a valuable resource which could be gained for free.

Surely it depends on the what the rubbish is. If its all saleable stuff, it may be better to offer something, rather than demand a fee. Having said that its the tender aspect that means they lost the task. If they were just negotiating for the job, they may have done better, rather than tendering, and not knowing what the other group. Is that risk, or chance?

Depends if you can recognise and get saleable items by taking stuff away for free, you are hardly getting something for nothing. Effectively you are being paid in kind, then are realising it in cash. Ultimately, its about making a profit at the end of the day, regardless of how you do it.

This is the voice of reason. Thank you. You should replace Nick on the show, he didn't have a clue.

Except it's not. The furniture netted them a third of their total income for the day. It took 1 1/2 hours to do at the most. The earliest time we hear mentioned for them working is 8AM, so they're working for at least 11 1/2 hours. That means that the furniture removals netted them 33% of their profit and took up only 13% of their time.

That's a very good deal. It's not being the "voice of reason" to suggest that the contract isn't worth the time.

This reminds me of maths exams in school. Do you get the most marks for showing your reasoning and working out, step by step, or do you get the most marks for arriving at the correct answer without showing how you got there.

At the end of the day, Susan was right in both pitches, however she got there, but Helen's thought process was clearer. Zoe seemed to just be on a different page altogether.

There's no point talking about how things would work in the real world - it's like Yasmina and the catering task all over again. The objective is to win the task by whatever means necessary, not run the company as a mini-version of how you'd do it in the real world. If offering £150 for the furniture gets them the contract, then it's the right call - and it would have made a difference of £450 - the £150 profit and the other team losing their £300 profit.

Actually, we don't know exactly how long it took for them to do the furniture job, and how much of the total time they had to allocate to that particular job. We also don't know if they had to get rid of some the furniture and pay for that. We never saw what they actually sold to the shop.
Anyway, with Susan's approach, her team would have made £100 less on that same job, had they got it. Logic would have lost badly, had they made the same deal.

Susan clearly misunderstood the task or was not listening to the advice.

Zoe was quite right in her understanding.

Helen took a high risk strategy and luckily for her it paid off. Had it not then I reckon Lord Sugar would have fired her.

I don't find Susan annoying (you are breaking the golden rule that Susan cannot be criticised on this forum !!!) but she has her flaws certainly. She is a contender definately. More so than most of the other candidates.

Why? Sorry but even if Helen got it right, she was the ONLY one who clearly understood the task. She understood you could charge someone, she understood you could even do it for free or pay them ....... and that it was all based on what material was to be collected and what you could get for it.

Sorry but that alone deserves to be rewarded because it shows her thought processes were right.

Zoe on the other hand seemed to think you could only ever charge people and showed no initiative, whereas Susan didnt even have a clue one way or the other what the task was about.

Sorry even if Helen had stuffed it up, she didnt deserve to be fired, because at least she understood the task ..... which is the most important bit.

The cost of disposal of scrap is an overhead.

I have to pay it in my business.

Certainly we get paid for the collection of metals but for other scrap it costs us money for it to be collected.