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gorman

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How do you deal with customers that feel they don't need to pay you what you aggreed on? I way underbid a takedown operation on a huge norway maple and the older couple who hired me are being rather shadey about paying me. I have to buy a new bar to take the trunk segment down and for some reason I feel that they're waiting for me to finish to stiff me.
 
Gorman, if you agreed on the price, you gotta do the work. It's not their fault you need a new bar.

What do you mean you think they are waiting to stiff you?

love
nick
 
How can you say that if you havent finished?
Step1 you agree on price
Step2 you provide the work as proposed
Step3 you collect the payment

Are you trying to collect prior to completion?
 
on tree work i never collect a deposit or try to collect before completion. if i price the job seperately tree and stump i'll collect on the tree and collect on the stump when it is done. certain customers i know will not pay for 30-60 days all acceptable before hand. sometimes i even set up payment plans with customers that had a dead tree that "had" to come down.

but my payment policy was simple......if in the end i got stiffed i returned the tree 3x on their front lawn. i once had a contarctor stiff me on land clearing so i filled his foundation with chips. :)

i think i only returned 3 tree's........people usually don't argue with people with chain saws.

finish the job first..............what makes you think they are trying to stiff you?
 
I had a couple pay me $68. for a $225 job; they said I took too long and didn't clean up in a timely fashion. I told them the $68 did not even cover my labor, so if we could not meet in the middle I'd come by to repossess the soil and mulch I spread. Come Friday I may have to. What a pain.

Gorman, flush that stump and collect on the spot. Shame on you for underbidding, but what reason is there to imagine they're planning to stiff you? I've underbid many times; some customers will liten to your plight and help you out, if you lay out the whole story for them. But of course they don't have to give you more than the agreed price.
 
if you under bid, you pretty much have to just grin and bear it. pretty hard to maintain professionalism while asking for more $ than was previously agreed upon.
 
gorman,

When you go to the saw-shop to pick up that new bar to finish the job, and they hand you a bar without a tip, and tell you "That'll be $57.95, but we gotta get a new tip to finish the sale.", I'm betting you'll make sounds that are more than just cagey regarding payment.

Finish your underbid job, and tell us how it goes.


RedlineIt
 
Guy, they paid you less because it took too long? What are you. McDonald's Drive Thru Tree Service?

Take the mulch back and tell them their trees are ugly anyways!

Gorman, I agree with Redline- tell us how it goes!

love
nick
 
Welcome to the 'I screwed up the bid club' it is not an exclusive club, everyone in the biz has done it at least once. Finish the job, clean up nicely and then ask for your money unless you made prepayment arrangement prior to starting. Learn from your error and move on.

Guy, picking up mulch and soil after spreading sounds like no fun at all, :angry: maybe stop by a seed store and pick up some nice dandelion and chickweed and maybe next trip up to Richmond pick up some nice virginia creeper to add to that landscape. Hope it works out.
 
Guy, Just a heads-up. It is possible to get into trouble for repossessing landscape material. The law sometimes views those things as part of the real property now. What you can do is place a lien on the property. i havfe never done so. I have never been stiffed for more than $100.It wasn't worth my time to pursue it after several phone calls. The next logical step was to beat them half to death and I don't want the trouble for less than $100.
 
If you get ripped off really bad by reprehensible people, you can get a big water tank in the back of your pickup, with an electric pump, filled with pesticide and water. Drive by and hose down their yard, a while later cruise by and say "nice garden".
 
Water ballons that are carefully filled with roundup or other herbicide have the same effect, and is alot faster.

If a person used salt you could write something in the yard, such as the ammount owed.....
 
NickfromWI said:
Guy, they paid you less because it took too long? What are you. McDonald's Drive Thru Tree Service?

No kidding. I've never had someone try to pay me less because I took too long. Maybe because I got it finished a lot faster than they pictured and feel that the price is too high for the time put in. Theres got to be more to the story....
 
Sure it sucks to get ripped off but you haven't had that happen to you yet until you are finished the job! If you ever do get stiffed by a customer don't sweat it... you can always write it off at tax time. No big deal, ;) . HC
 
hobby climber said:
If you ever do get stiffed by a customer don't sweat it... you can always write it off at tax time. No big deal, ;) . HC

Not in the USA, you can't. You cannot write off labor you did. You could write off labor you paid, but you write that off anyway, whether you collected or not. If a customer tried to stiff me, I would collect somehow. I was going to list several ways to get even, but I might get into trouble, so I suggest buying George Hayduke's book "Get Even". I believe you can order it from Amazon.com. It is full of good ideas.
 
There's 2 types of debtors, and only 2.

Those who cant pay for whatever genuine reason and those who wont pay.

The latter category is the worst.

If you don't get paid start asking questions which will assist you into which of the 2 categories they fall.

Cant pay, get what you can plus drip feed, pressure relatives to pay or cust to hock gear etc.

Wont pay, be pleasant, smile, appeal to their conscience if that doesn't work, be nice smile walk away ...

...Behind the scenes you go in hard, get your evidence ready, case prepared, small debts court lined up and return with the summons. You go in real hard, for the jugular, and either they pay you on the spot or you file that document and destroy their credit rating ... most of the hard core will pay at this point.

PS: I was a debt collector for 7 years.
 
Nice one Ekka, had to do that a few times myself.
Have been cought out a few times by the 'that was a lot quicker than I thought you'd be' brigade, really hacks me off. I tell them their paying for skill, not time.
 
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