Interesting Call

[DDM]

I had a very interesting Phone call today from an Irrate customer. He wanted to know Why i had Charged him 100.00 more than i had Quoted. Why i had Tore up his front Yard? Why had a Broke his Bird house and not told him? My Reply was You job isnt on my Schedule till Thursday. His Response was why did i Remove the tree on Saturday??? My reply I didnt. His Reply Your Name XXXXXX Tree service was on the truck!!!!!!!! My response was That isnt my company name! You musta called someone Else to do the work as Well!

 

[treeclimber165]

Sounds like somebody was confused!

 

[DDM]

Yeah Until i looked at the Schedule I thought i might have done the Job!

 

[treeman82]

LMAO Dave!

I don't think that I have had that pleasure yet of having somebody call about a job I didn't do. I have however had customers threaten to kill me before One guy said that I was lucky he liked me, otherwise he would have had his boys cut my feet off. The other guy (his son) one day told me that "somebody is going to kill you today." I just LOVE working for the crazies. They make my life that much more interesting

 

[Jumper]

[

"I don't think that I have had that pleasure yet of having somebody call about a job I didn't do."

When I was in the reserves I recieved a glowing letterof commendation, from the Army Staff College, via my Brigade Commander, for a tasking I declined because they were being such stingy twits with TDY $$$ at their end. So I decided I did not really want a call out to active duty for two weeks and stayed at home.

They even knew what position I had filled on this exercise and quoted several instances where my performance was superior. I pointed out to the Lt Col who signed the letter a few weeks later via email that I WAS NOT THERE! (and I told him why too). All this from the College that teaches Army officers the value of staff duties.

 

[o0_TreeMan_0o]

I hope you told him your company name and that you would be glad to work for him in the future to avoid that kind of shoddy work.

 

[DDM]

LOL I had already been given the job I dont know why the other company did the work!

 

[tshanefreeman]

DDM,

That's probably why they did a crappy job...................they were in a hurry to finish up and get paid before you showed up!

Hmmmmmmmmm........... So the options are endless when it comes to getting business!

 

[kf_tree]

i've had that happen before. i've also done jobs that i never estimated. they called up the office to give the ok. i had no record of it so i asked what price did we agree to. i showed up to the job, i now know i never estimated it. it seems like a good price so i did the job and collected. i once went to estmate a job and the women comes out to hand me a check. some one else already did the job and she thought i was there to collect.(i should have said cash only and ran)

 

[Stumper]

I have been mistaken for the guy the customer already contracted with when I showed up to bid on a job a few times. I always clarified that it wasn't me they talked to the day before or whenever. A few months ago I got a strange call from a customer. He had contracted with treeman A who kept putting him off for a month. Finally he called me and requested an estimate. I gave him a price and a date a few days out on which I could do the work. We agreed that he would decide on whether to cancel with A and call me to schedule the work if so. Next morning he calls me and asks "Xyz tree service isn't you is it" My reply was "no". He then explained that he had just recieved a scheduling call from Xyz who had described the whole job. He gave them the go ahead but after he hung up he realized that the company name didn't match. He had never called Xyz! Our best guess was that Treeman A had subbed it to Xyz (A has no stump grinder and the job involved complete removal of some overgrown Quince) The Customer called back and cancelled with xyz-He said that they were NOT nice about it.

 

[SpikedSupra]

No Business Skills

Many businesses fail or struggle to make funds and they really wonder why. Its great if your the BEST treeman that ever lived but if you have no business sense its worthless to open a tree business. Success in the service industry relies very much on customer satisfaction. Pleasing your customers is such an important part of service work. Some companies may have all the skills but no business sense. It amazes me about some of these stories that you guys tell.

 

[Newfie]

Nothing to do with customer service

Missed the boat Forrest:

"Pleasing your customers is such an important part of service work."

True, but not the point.

From my perspective these stories although amazing have nothing to do with our fellow forum members being able to deliver customer satisfaction. Sounds like a tendency for the customer to forget who they are supposed to be working with because they have a million tree guys bidding so they can save $10. Come back when you are in line with 10 other guys bidding on a job. Just because they are the customer doesn't mean that they aren't total idiots. You can write stuff down for people and it still won't matter most of the time.