When are you going to get over to cut my trees?

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treemandan said:
No not you, I know you got it figured. You as in anybody who wants to pay cash to have their ttree truck released from the impound. I am not sure of what the law says about house squeezing.
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The Dan did not understand the too pissed part I have not got that angry in many ,many moons but I don't really give a rats azz about what the law does when in that frame of mind. So would I squeeze possibly but not probably because Dan, bud; my customers squeeze and hug me instead of their trees lol. Be it lesbian, single chicks they all just want to squeeze me, I feel like a tickle me elmo or something and don't even understand it:monkey: My wife thinks its funny they do me this way and sometimes I feel she is setting me up bwth.
 
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Dan Fan....

I want to hear more from THE DAN.

You're a little hard to follow sometimes, but almost always right on the money.

And I too, would love to knock out a few jobs and cold ones with THE DAN !

Keep'em coming ! More job pics. More astute social commentary. More DAN !
 
arbor pro said:
3 months ago, I responded to an emergency call by a divorcee. A 15" limb had split off of her tree and was now laying across her fence and on top of her neighbor's garage. Very little rigging was available - it was a light crane job all the way but, I don't have a crane and told her that. She begged me to do my best to get the limb off anyways. I informed her (verbally - my mistake for not getting it in writing) that I would try to be careful but could not be responsible for any damage that might result.

I rigged what I could and everything went fine except for one small spring-loaded branch which swung back hard enough to knock my helmet off and put a small ding in her vinyl fence which you could only see from the neighbor's side. She told me not to worry about it and I left the job feeling bad about the fence but expecting to get a check in the mail in a couple of days. 3 months later, she is delaying payment because of the ding in her fence and insists that I give her a break in the price of the job as well as wave any late fees and interest on her unpaid account.

The nerve of some people. They beg you to do a job you'd rather not do and expect you to bump your other customers to do their work first and then they have the gall to withhold payment without discussing it with you at the time the work was completed.

So, I gave her a discount just so I could get paid something and won't be doing any work for her again. Write that one off to 'Bad Accounts' come tax time. Some people and jobs you just have a bad feeling about. I should have trusted my gut instinct when I looked at the job and just walked away. 24 years in the business and I'm still learning valuable lessons every day...
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Write it off as a bad account here http://www.clientcritic.com it is free and works great.
 
It depends on your customer whether you can get paid directly. For government or commercial customers, you are going to have to bill and have to wait.

On strata complexes or HOA's where there is a property managemnet company, you are actually billing a third party, you have to wait.

So unless you are only doing residential work, you will already have to have billing procedures in place. The challenge as inferred above is cash flow.

It works both ways though, most of your suppliers don't expect payment up front.

Manage cash flow, keep your accts recievable as short as possible and extend your accts payable as long as possible.
 
treemandan said:
You are a heartbreaker buddy, I love ya for it. It makes a guy feel important that others owe him money, huh? Works for me.
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Actually I think its a difference of countries, I have worked for alot of companies and all that I am aware of invoiced for 30 days. Work done on our house, 30 days, work done on my truck, again 30 days. Dont feel heartbroken, it doesnt bother me. part of the game.
 
reachtreeservi said:
I want to hear more from THE DAN.

You're a little hard to follow sometimes, but almost always right on the money.

And I too, would love to knock out a few jobs and cold ones with THE DAN !

Keep'em coming ! More job pics. More astute social commentary. More DAN !
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Might wanna watch out for that second hand smoke however reach, lol.
 
In tree work I have yet to have a problem like these that are being described. But in my carpet cleaning business I have run into it more times than I even like to remember. I was in an university town, and every spring
my phone would ring 30 times a day with these students wanting to make sure they get the damage deposit back. No matter how specific I was, more times than not I did not get paid upon completion of job. And by all fairness, the dead beats at school level are less than 20% of them. However aprox. 70 % of them that actually paid, made me wait until they got the deposit back from the landlord. Even though they knew and signed a job sheet specifying that payment in full upon completion.
So to my point. Should I unplug my phone for a month and avoid these potential non payers. Or do I just run my business and take the good with the bad. Well so far in 15 years or so, I have had less than 15 non payers. However I did have to wait for over a year once. I also took $5 monthly checks from a lady.
Whats my trick? Simple, make good rapore (SP?) with the customer. Take the time to be a salesman durring the bid. Remember that nobody likes to stiff a friend. Just like nobody sues a doctor that they like. Never schedual a job without a signed contract. Simple paperwork works in court!! Too many tree services want to look overly proffesional these days. A simple grid with text boxes. Fill in the contract with the customer. Read to them as you write it. Then have them sign it. Very few people think lets take advantage of a local tree service, but believe me in carpet cleaning many people think that way. Especially renters.
One last thing. Jesus, a very smart buddy of mine said,"whoever is without sin be the first to cast a stone." Have I ever made anyone wait for money?
 
Thats twisted Slayer! I do look at trees on property and think " Cut it this way with the saw and BAM! instant house demolition." My friend really shocked me one day with his solution for non payers when it comes to his stump grinding business. " Bury them in a hole up to their head and then fire up the ole sandvik on the grinder near them. It brought to light a whole other side of him I didn't know existed. SCARY! I always pay him in cash when I need him to grind a stump for me, and give him extra, and apologize for not getting my wallet out fast enough.:jawdrop:
 
Slvrmple72 said:
Thats twisted Slayer! I do look at trees on property and think " Cut it this way with the saw and BAM! instant house demolition." My friend really shocked me one day with his solution for non payers when it comes to his stump grinding business. " Bury them in a hole up to their head and then fire up the ole sandvik on the grinder near them. It brought to light a whole other side of him I didn't know existed. SCARY! I always pay him in cash when I need him to grind a stump for me, and give him extra, and apologize for not getting my wallet out fast enough.:jawdrop:
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Chicken baak baak baak!:laugh:
 
I had a climber working for me once that told me of a very well to do customer that worked him overtime doing a perfect trim, with extra time spent on doing it just right... Then refused to pay. As I recall the story, it was a lawyer.

He returned in the middle of the night with a handsaw and cambium cut a full circle on the base of the tree. Needless to say, that was the end of the tree.

That didn't get him paid for the work done, but I suspect the lawyer learned that no amount of degrees or legal authority can protect you from an angry tree trimmer with a saw.

And of course, there was no way to prove who did the damage, so he never got in trouble.
 
pdqdl said:
I had a climber working for me once that told me of a very well to do customer that worked him overtime doing a perfect trim, with extra time spent on doing it just right... Then refused to pay. As I recall the story, it was a lawyer.

He returned in the middle of the night with a handsaw and cambium cut a full circle on the base of the tree. Needless to say, that was the end of the tree.

That didn't get him paid for the work done, but I suspect the lawyer learned that no amount of degrees or legal authority can protect you from an angry tree trimmer with a saw.

And of course, there was no way to prove who did the damage, so he never got in trouble.
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I would have been more inclined to catch him off guard and stomp his
azz no better way for a prick to learn.
 
treeslayer said:
go on a midnight raid and spray the front yard ,with straight roundup, writing in 4' letters the message of choice.:censored:

seen that done, very effective on manicured lawns.:buttkick:
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Use Diquat instead of roundup: the grass turns brown in one day during the summer time. If they decide to pay the bill, or there are complications making you wish you hadn't sprayed, then the grass isn't dead. Just nice and brown. Real fast.

Furthermore, if you kill off the grass with roundup, you don't have a clean slate in two months to write something else.
 

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