I thought it would be interesting to bump this thread just showing how prices are going up and up.
In this year's Tontober thread I posted all the girls who had been mentioned on here as being tontober eligible or under £100, in the past 12-18 months. I had to remove the ones who were no longer eligible and out of interest I kept a quick tally as I did it. Obviously the following is just for indie girls at the lower end of the price spectrum. My results were:
- A total of 47 were still eligible to be included in Tontober.
- 8 WGs increased their prices (at some point in the preceeding 12-18 months) out of eligibility (some increased prices significantly).
- Some of the 47 (unfortunately I'm not sure how many but I'd guess only a few) increased their prices a bit but either not enough to make them ineligible or they only increased their rates for a certain length of booking, making them still eligible for either 30 mins or an hour but not both.
- 12 WGs became inactive (and therefore also ineligible) in the preceding 12-18 months. One more became a parlour girl. And another moved to Newcastle (and also increased her rates).
So, excluding those who became inactive or moved, 55 WGs were potentially eligible, 8 of which didn't make the cut due to increased rates which means a minimum of 14.5% of WGs increased their rates in the past 12-18 months (as of October 2018). It was more if you include those who were still eligible but did increase their rates - I'm not sure of the exact number of those but if we guess 3 that would take the percentage of girls who increased their rates (in the past 12-18 months) to 20%.
I can't recall how many girls increased their rates significantly but I remember being surprised at particularly the amounts they were increased by as well as the number of girls who did significantly increase them. I'd guess the number of significant rate increases (£20 or more) was about 5 out of the 8 but I could be a little off.
So 20% of the total girls increased their rates and around 12.5% did so significantly (bearing in mind that £20 or more is quite significant considering they're at the lower end of the price spectrum).
Of course, those figures don't show how long the girls were at their previous price point for (it might have been for a very long time but it might not). Also, the total number of 55 is just those mentioned on here, it's not anywhere near the total number who might have been eligible (e.g. if someone had thoroughly checked AW).
It would also be interesting to see how many "mid priced" girls increased their prices, one would presume it's a similar number/percentage to the above girls or less but that could be wrong, especially if many of them are very popular.
Hopefully more of us take this approach, our combined buying power can quickly force prices down if we want to as a collective
If you just mean the active members on here, I'm not convinced. Even if you include many lurkers, I still think we're vastly outnumbered by people who're just on AW or use other sources and haven't heard about this site (or are banned from it). There's also plenty time poor, cash rich people (or just really rich), on here and in general, who won't bother because they don't want to limit their options any further and don't have an issue with most prices (especially if they just stick to shorter bookings).
As you can imagine, I punt quite a lot but I don't think I make much of a difference to any girl's wallet, even those I've seen numerous times. So if I imagine what it would take to make a difference, it must be a hell of a lot of punters.
Nonetheless, your thoughts and approach are admirable. I tried it this October (Tontober) and really struggled. I'd been OK in the past couple of years but only because I wasn't so close to seeing everyone I've wanted to see (at that price point). Also, given how the NW Tontober thread fared in general this year (
https://www.ukpunting.com/index.php?topic=224426), I can't see much appetite for what you're suggesting. Then again, I can't see too much appetite for punting in general.