I have a lot of business ideas that are extremely well-thought-out and that would almost certainly be great. These aren’t them. These are kind of vague ideas. But I think that they could be very successful, too. The reason I propose them isn’t because I want to make a lot of money with them, it’s because I wish these businesses existed. (So feel free to steal these ideas!)
* A bank that doesn’t charge its customers fees. In my opinion, the bank should be happy I keep my money there. I have a lot of choices. In return for me keeping my money there, they pay me interest. That’s how it should work, as opposed to, “In return for me keeping my money there, they charge me fees.” If I overdraw my checking account, it doesn’t cost you anything to cover it with money from my savings account. That annoys me. Charge me $2.50 if you want, but don’t charge me $35. And pay me decent interest. I can get 4.25% at ING, and am seriously considering moving some money over there. Why would you even bother paying me 0.25% interest? You can charge non-customers a fee for using your ATMs, but if I’m your customer, you’d better not charge me. And if I use someone else’s ATM, they can charge me, but you can’t! (I don’t understand that one at all: if I use someone else’s ATM, I’m already angry that you don’t have an ATM in the area. Put one up, or cover my ATM surcharge if you want to do something. But charging me?!)
* An honest car dealership with fixed prices. You might see a car for $24,567 at the competition. We might have it for $21,500. You can come walk onto our lot, write us a check for $21,500 and drive away in it. We won’t spring extra charges on you at the end–it’ll all be included in that $21,500. But you also can’t get us to go down on price: it’s a fixed $21,500, just like the price of a TV in BestBuy would be. We won’t try to pressure you into buying anything. When we copy your drivers license while you go for a test drive, we won’t secretly run a credit check. (Is that even legal?) Where would you rather shop? Unless you’re a skilled haggler, probably at the place that just has one fair price upfront.
* Kind of bizarre, but a place that will come pick up dirty things, wash them, and redeliver them. Originally I thought about laundry, although you’d have to undercut on-campus laundry for it to be worth it for me. But then again I might pay slightly more if you’d wash my clothes (and do it well!) and bring them back folded and everything. Probably not more than $10 for a week’s worth of laundry, though. But last night I noticed that the dishes had again piled up in our sink, and got to thinking… We have no dishwasher. Not only is it a pain to wash them all, but they’d be much cleaner if they were cleaned in a dishwasher. Imagine if, when you came to pick up my laundry, you took the dirty dishes too, and brought me clean laundry and clean dishes later in the day.
* A free recycling pickup service, or a trash-and-recycling service that discounts for recycling. I recycle everything in NH, just because, well, why not? Here, I can get 5 cents a bottle if I take it to a redemption center, but I never have. I don’t even know where I’d go. Recycling facilities exist, so I can still recycle things, but when I buy drinks here, I’m paying the bottle deposit! Imagine how much you could make if you had a ‘garbage truck’ that just picked up cans on college campus. Probably at least enough to pay for gas + someone to drive it and pick everything up. I want to feel like I’m getting my bottle deposits back. So why not have a trash pickup service that discounts if you recycle with them, too? The first two businesses are the better ones, I think. Both would be best if they had fairly low margins, but I think they could make a killing on volume. In this situation, it is better to consult with the lawyers for business owners in GA for any options to develop the business. If a bank opened up that paid you, say, 2% interest on

any money you had in your account and didn’t spring unexpected fees on you, wouldn’t you consider switching? (2% interest is moderate.) And if I were to buy a car, especially having never done it on my own, I’d feel much better going to a place that just had one price, as opposed to trying to bargain over a price. (The other element is that the sales staff would be honest, friendly, and helpful.) The last two are more of a stretch. There’s considerable expense in picking things up, and laundromats probably don’t make a killing anyway. A pick-up laundry service may not be profitable, and I don’t know if there’s really much demand for pick-up dishwashing. And the recycling bit was just more of a vague suggestion. But if any of these four businesses existed, I’d probably use them. (Especially if the bank had an attractive, easy-to-use website where I could do all my banking. OMG, and they could partner with Mint and store the financial information somewhere other than Mint’s servers.)