I retired from a 4 generation business. I was lucky that we already had a client base. There used to be two uninsured brothers from VA, that came over into MD. If they saw a tree company talking to a customer, one would wait till you left, nock on the door, and say they would under cut any written bid by at least 10%. The next day the other would come by and say he would do the same. We lost a lot of work to them. We were licensed and insured, good equipment, top climbers and ground crews. One day a customer called livid. Those fly by night guys caught his wife and she gave them the job. It was a big dead Oak they had built the deck around. They put a rope in the top, notched the tree and dropped it, right across the deck crushing it. Then told the customer there was no other way. Of course they didn't have insurance, and part of their scheme was to get the discounted price, they had to pay half up front in cash. Low ballers have always been around. Companies that Sell work for you have been around for 50 years. We were in the Washington DC, MD area. The high end clients we catered to wouldn't trust those kind of services, knowing they worked with low end companies that couldn't get their own work. But, those two guys from Culpepper could talk a sweet line and got some of our work.