No offense, pdql, you been at this running a biz thing for longer than I so I'm just curious to your thought process on this one. When you first described this I thought your actions made sense and that I might sometime do the same in your case but I was thinking much bigger numbers. If you'd only be out 400 bucks in the end why wouldn't you save face and credibility and just eat it? My professionalism is worth far more than 400 dollars.
1. This was back in 1997, so $400 was a lot more money then. It was the first year I had that bucket truck, so I was a bit of a newbie with a bucket truck.
2. Even with the additional payment for the crane, the job was seriously underbid. Even after adding some money to the price to compensate for the crane, I considered that I was "eating it". I worked on that tree for an entire day and a half before I had it on the ground. The first day was discovery of my mistake, and the second day was spent working out of that incredibly slow crane (with a man-bucket mounted on the end) cutting down the tree.
The access to the tree was very difficult, and we were barely able to get the larger crane truck down the skinny alley and into the rough terrain of the tiny backyard. My crane operator was my brother-in-law, and the rest of the tree took all day to complete, since he was not a skilled operator, and it took a lot of extra time to lower the wood into a safe area. Bottom line: I lost money big-time on my mistake, but I suppose I gained some important experience.
3. I had done previous work for this customer, and he was always a cheapskate, seeking the very bottom dollar and expecting the most out of it. He bought and rehabilitated houses for a living, and seldom sent me any work that was very profitable.
Unless it was a job that he absolutely couldn't do himself, there was no future work for me in it. We understood each other completely, and there was no credibility to be saved. He knew that I was capable of doing of the more advanced tree work and and that I was trying to honor my quote, and he also knew that I had materially underbid my competition.
In this particular case, I made a mistake, I admitted it, and I offered my customer an opportunity to profit from my mistake: I had 1/2 the tree on the ground before I discovered that I simply couldn't finish the job safely. He might have taken another tree services quote at a reduced price at that point, but he stuck with me anyway.
Why? I believe that he had complete confidence that I would do the job well, whereas the other tree services were an unknown quantity.
He called me just last summer, for what he described as a simple brush cleanup that he did not have time to do himself.
HO! HO! HO!
It turns out that there was an enormous yellow jacket nest in the middle of the work area. After I had farmed through the area and discovered the nest, he denied even knowing that the yellow jackets were there, despite having already cleaned the brush almost the rest of the property. Fortunately, I had chosen to mow it in the summer heat with my air-conditioned Bobcat A300 and our brush mower deck.
No stings, no problem! I even took the time to dig out the nest with the corner of the mower deck. That really stirred them up!
If I had been there in an open cab, exposed to the yellow jackets, it would have been a a sure trip to the hospital if someone was even a little allergic. Before I got off the job, he wanted me to do some additional brush clearing at no additional price.
Like I said, he was a cheapskate, but we understood each other. He pays the bill I ask for, and I must watch carefully for all hidden danger and expenses.
oke::hmm3grin2orange:
