Thomas Inskip (Founder, Alfred) prices every service at cost so the company can't profit from inattention — 'Eric Ries is a genius. i simply could not put his latest book, Incorruptible, down'

Thomas Inskip is building Alfred, a members-only household-services company. He reads financial gravity as the explanation for the UK's loyalty penalty — Citizens Advice put the average homeowner's overpayment at £877 a year in 2018 — and describes the structural answer his own company adopted: every service priced at cost, no retail markup, so Alfred cannot earn more from customers who don't check.

“Eric Ries is a genius. i simply could not put his latest book, *Incorruptible*, down. Here's the crux of it... Most businesses don't set out to overcharge the people they serve. So why do so many end up doing it? Ries brilliantly calls it "financial gravity". It's the steady pull on every company to take a little more from its customers. It rarely looks like greed. It looks like a quarterly target, a new investor, or one small price rise that seems harmless at the time. Each decision makes sense on its own. Add them up over 10 years, and a company built to serve its customers ends up profiting most from the ones who don't check.” — Thomas Inskip on LinkedIn