In late November I hired a guy to shovel my driveway for the 2005-06
winter season. I live southeast of Buffalo, NY so it snows quite a
bit. He first quoted me $250, and then he changed it to $300 when he
saw that my driveway was longer than average. I agreed to pay $300,
and I agreed to give him $150 up front and the balance in January.
Last weekend he showed up unannounced asking for the balance. He
really caught me off guard, and I had company and didn't want to get
into an argument, so I just paid him. Meanwhile, it has snowed a
couple of times since I gave him the first installment and he only
showed up once to shovel my driveway/sidewalk. But since the snow
wasn't too deep, I let it go. I know the snow was deep enough to
shovel because he shoveled the driveway/sidewalk across the street (he
works for them too). Now today he shows up (and we had some lake
effect snow last night) and he wants more money. He says that I have a
really long driveway and I should pay him more money. I tell him very
nicely that I understand he has a business, but that I agreed to pay
$300 and that is all I am willing to pay, and if he feels that it is
not adequate, he can refund the rest of the money I already paid him
and I'll find someone else. He says, let's talk about this again when
I finish your driveway, and then he goes out to shovel. While he's out
there I'm inside steaming because this is the second person who has
done something like this to me (the first was a drywaller who quoted me
one price and then demanded more money after he had done just enough
work in the room to make it impossible for me to scrap the whole job).
But I decided that I wanted to be reasonable, so I decided that I would
agree to pay him more money under two conditions: First, he would do
my driveway so that I can leave the house by 8:00am on weekdays (the
two times he showed up he didn't even get here until after 9) and
second I would pay him the new balance due some time in February. Well
he had a fit. He wanted the money now. He said that my driveway is a
lot of work and he's very trustworthy and it's not like he won't show
up if I pay him now. I said I've already paid you $300 and you've
shoveled my driveway twice. Even if I agree that it's worth more than
$300 for the whole year (and I don't necessarily agree on that) I do
NOT agree that the balance is due NOW. How the heck does he figure I
should pay him another couple hundred dollars NOW???

I have definitely learned my lesson this time. I'm not hiring anyone
to do anything anymore if I have to pay them a deposit up front.
People can really suck sometimes. I don't know if these guys would do
this to me if I had a husband or boyfriend living here with me who
could deal with these kinds of things, but I tend to think not. I can
probably kiss my $300 goodbye. He probably won't show up to shovel
anymore, and I guess that's what I deserve for paying him up front.
The only reason I even trusted this guy was because I watched him LAST
YEAR do the shoveling for the people across the street, and he was very
reliable. But I guess reliability isn't everything.

Lesley