What do you do about difficult customers?

[Complete Turf Care]

Hi everybody, here's a question of a more philosophical nature rather than technical. For all you owner operators who do little jobs for people around the way, what do you do for people who want you to do things that are dangerous or abusive for the machine, or want a big expensive job done way faster and cheaper than is possible.

The first situation I generally attribute to over hopeful ignorance about what these things can do and how expensive it is to fix them.

The second situation, where people budgeted six hours for a job that could take two days, is generally signified by the customer getting agitated and making big waving motions with their arms, like I'm just not understanding and if I understood the the dirt would move itself faster.

Sometimes the situation degrades, I generally try to be polite even if I'm getting angry, and explain why I'm getting annoyed and apologising for getting annoyed but SORRY IT'S JUST NOT LIKE THAT! Too expensive to fix this thing and go flip your own Backhoe down the hill.

Rural Costa Rica, steep mountain terrain. Twenty one year old Deere 310d with 24k hours on it. Customers of limited means sometimes which also makes things difficult. Farm roads and rural building sites are the bread and butter.

Anyone have any perspectives or advice? I suppose this theme runs across all aspects of contracting.

Thanks!

Sebastian

This problem may be your fault. Are you bidding the enough to cover costs? Is your equipment able to handle the jobs you bid? You said your machine is 21 years old and has 24k hours on it. Is it time for an upgrade?

Putting what you will do and what you will NOT do in your bid helps when surprises come up. Maybe you should bid by the hour and not by the job?

 

[QRTRHRS]

Late sixties or early seventies (after some time with Uncle Sam) I worked for an excavating contractor. He was asked to backfill a 15 course tall block wall with no pilasters. Advising the homeowner was futile so against his better judgement, the boss agreed to do the job.

We were careful to bring in super clean fill and kept the dozer well away from the wall and did a lot of handwork to level out the fill job. That night it rained and the wall blew out. He sued but lost but the boss lost as well having to pay us for the day to testify.

The customer is not always right.

 

[Sebculb]

Sebastian you must be near Golfito? Very interesting country and do enjoy it and your problem is not unique! You might want to leave yourself some reserve in your bidding process. There are some jobs you might not get because of not being the low bidder and you actually might enjoy watching the company who did get the job have the frustrations that you could have put on yourself. There are few people that would tell you if you did under bid and they would volunteer extra payment for it! Even with adding a little you still will find you didn't add enough and with the surprises you might find! I do enjoy the country and the roads do leave a bit to be desired! This past December we came from San Jose to San Isidoro and then down to Dominical on our way back to Quepos for some fishing.

Wow, cool! You passed right through my neighborhood. I live in Rivas about 10km east of San Isidro.

Thanks everyone for all the replies! Golly, looks like this is a common issue in machine work and contracting in general.

Funny thing, none of it's actually contract work with a bid. Everyone around here is just hourly. Leaves some room for miscommunication but I also haven't gotten"screwed" yet. (Except for breakdowns)

 

[Sebculb]

Hola Complete Lawn Care:
" This problem may be your fault. Are you bidding the enough to cover costs? Is your equipment able to handle the jobs you bid? You said your machine is 21 years old and has 24k hours on it. Is it time for an upgrade? "

The old Deere is the upgrade! Broke a little toy Kubota in half doing work for people with a 3 point hitch hoe. Put the feet down on the hoe and it closed the crack in the central beam or whatever you want to call it, welded it like four times and sold it to buy the old Deere.

The Deere's great for what it is but I want to get another similar one so I can usually make sure at least one is working. Two old hoes cost less than half of a newer one around here, and there's no guarantee a newer one won't have catastrophic failures. I've watched it happen! The only worrisome thing is parts availability in the future for OLD machines

 

[Oldpath05]

Late sixties or early seventies (after some time with Uncle Sam) I worked for an excavating contractor. He was asked to backfill a 15 course tall block wall with no pilasters. Advising the homeowner was futile so against his better judgement, the boss agreed to do the job.

We were careful to bring in super clean fill and kept the dozer well away from the wall and did a lot of handwork to level out the fill job. That night it rained and the wall blew out. He sued but lost but the boss lost as well having to pay us for the day to testify.

The customer is not always right.

I couldn't disagree more, if a customer is paying the bill, he's right even if a house is built wrong, if someone is paying you to do a job, he's right.

When I walk into a auto parts store like I did today, (a well known one) to buy a oil filter thinking that like a Purolator oil filter only has one version, so the salesperson gets me the basic version, I get down the road and open the box then notice this isn't the one I wanted, so I go back and ask them why they didn't tell/ask me about which one I wanted, which was Purolator ONE, they go well all you said was Purolator, which I did, not knowing that Purolator had a basic oil filter version. If I was the salesperson I would've said sorry and NOT give the PAYING customer STATIC like they did, no wonder more people are buying online, I've gotten better service at Walmart and Amazon THE PAYING CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT, if you disagree put me on your ignore list.

 

[bcp]

If a potential customer wants you to do something unsafe or that won't work, do you take the job anyway?

Bruce

 

[My Gym]

If you have a customer that demoralizes, demotivates, and costs you money, the best thing you can do is refer them to your competition. Nothing is better than a demoralized, demotivated, unprofitable competitor.

"The customer is always right", but some people should not be allowed to be customers.

 

[4570Man]

If a potential customer wants you to do something unsafe or that won't work, do you take the job anyway?

Bruce

I’ll warn them it won’t work but I’ll do it anyway. Define unsafe.

 

[bcp]

I’ll warn them it won’t work but I’ll do it anyway. Define unsafe.

Something like a small bridge over a creek or gully, that won't have any safety margin for his usage.

Or the retaining wall mentioned above.

Bruce

 

[4570Man]

Something like a small bridge over a creek or gully, that won't have any safety margin for his usage.

Or the retaining wall mentioned above.

Bruce

I’m not in the bridge building business so if it was more than just a short bridge over a shallow ditch I’d pass on the job. If I felt like it wouldn’t work I’d probably not do it just to save feature headache.