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ChairMan

In ,
Evodawg spewed forth:
ChairMan wrote:

In news:6e7fed5f-b7a0-4dcd-ab5a-
,
spewed forth:
On Mar 13, 1:05 pm, Robatoy wrote:

I then asked him for his phone number and handed him a piece of
paper. "I will have to think about your offer," I said.
He wrote down his phone number and handed it to me. I, while he
watched me, stuck that piece of paper in my shredder.

I love it. I about fell out of my chair laughing. Excellent.

Here's mine. It happens a couple of times a year.

"Hey Robert, what's going on?"

"Dunno... how are you? Are you ready to go on that siding project?"

"Well, yes and no. The good news is that we don't have as much work
to do as we did when you looked at it before, but the bad news is we
had someone else start it and now they can't finish it."

"What happened?'

"Well, they go about half way into the project and they claim they
didn't allow enough to finish the job. And my wife isn't very happy
as they have killed our plants around the house, and the siding
isn't on straight. You might need to straighten up (????) the
Hardie planks on their work."

"I see.... so they are half way finished with the installation and
some of it needs to be reworked?"

"Yeah. We know now we should have gone with your company. We want
you to finish it up. You want to come buy and measure what's left
to do? I don't know... they may have even finished more than half
come to think of it.... at this point we are thinking 'no big
deal', we just need someone to wrap it up. And of course *chuckle*
anything you could do to help us out we would sure appreciate it."

I remind them they got fair market price when I estimated the job
and since they expected it to be competitive at that time, there
wasn't anything in there to give them.

(I am always cheery about this, and NEVER say "I told you so". I do
point out they need to recall that sometimes the prices they tell me
they are seeing on an estimate doesn't cover materials alone. But
some clients are real daredevils!)

"No problem", I say. "Don't need to go out to the house actually.
Just take my original number and at 50% to it to demo the work they
did. That should cover it."

*crickets...*

"So it will cost MORE than we started with, even though it is
halfway finished? I thought you would take off at least a third
since so much work was done."

"Nope. Can't do it."

This is usually met with profane disbelief. Astonishment. Then
they are ****ed off. They call me names. Then they hang up. I
have never had one take me up on my offer.

All I can see in my own mind is taking over someone else's
warranty, a really ****ed off client to work with before we even
start the job, and the possibility that they don't have the money
to finish. And with the hurt feelings from screwing themselves, it
makes it hard to get paid.

Worse, NO referrals from embarrassed clients.

No thanks.

I wish they could see me shredding their proposal.

Good one.

I usually get ones that say "So and So will do it for this much, why
are you so much higher?"
I tell them that " Every man knows what his work is worth and if you
like his price better I suggest you call him then, because I don't
need anymore practice "
I get these calls now and then, Jose and JosB just screwed up my job!
What can you do for me? "Charge you hourly to complete it". And how
much would that be? Probably twice what I estimated, but won't know
until I ad up the hours. At that point it's usually ok, I'll call you
back. That call never makes it to my phone for some reason.

Do you really want the phone call?