worst firewood customer ever (long rant continued from months ago)

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banshee67

Poulan Wild Thang
Joined
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so i made a thread a few months back , maybe some of you remember it, probably not..
the cliff notes:
- delivered 3 cords of firewood to guy around april (all top quality ash/hickory/blacklocust/blackbirch, no rot, perfect wood)
-guy asks me about stacking them, AFTER i had already delivered all 3 in a big pile on his lawn,i reluctantly agreed because of promised future business, accepted $60 up front to come back and do it the following weekend after he built a rack
-he disappears, then calls me 3 months later.. "i got bugs in my wood, come get this outa here and bring me new wood" ... .. .
-go to his house to see how its been stored for the last 3 months. its left exactly how it was, one big pile on the grass(and pine needles) covered air tight in a HUGE BLUE TARP! with rocks around the edges to keep it tight to the ground of course! lol -effectively creating the perfect breeding ground for bugs/mold, etc. especially in the nice humid summer months. clearly it was his fault, but i reluctantly agreed to take the 1/6th of a cord(half of which didnt even have any bugs or signs of bugs) or so that he had put aside,and bring him new wood at my own expense.
-so after those 3 months he still isnt done with his "firewood rack" and says he will call me when hes done in a week or 2, so i can bring by the new wood, and stack all the other wood for him that hes already paid me to do , 3 months ago.
-2 more months go by and no word from him, he disappears again, so now we are at 5+ months from the original delivery date, now at present time
-calls me last week finally , but 4-5 times in a day, leaving multiple voice mails, basically accusing ME of disappearing, trying to make off with his $60 he paid me to stack(lol) and going back on my word to bring him more wood to replace the wood he left on the wet ground for 3 months that got bugs. this is when his mental health came into question... i didnt call him back that day, i figured it was 8pm when i heard his messages, ill call him tomorrow.. no big deal, so youd think..
next day... multiple calls from him, and voicemails , accusing me of some BS again! so now hes really bothering me... i said ok ill let this idiot wait a day or 2. still had every intention in the world of holding true to my word, i was NEVER going to screw the guy. then something weird happens.. the next day, he calls my HOUSE PHONE! i have NO idea how he got my house line? so now hes calling my home at 8pm on sunday night !!!
i call him back the next day and tell him hes out of line, hes the one who kept disappearing and i have every intention of bringing him more wood, free, and stacking the rest of it.
i talk to him lastnight, and tell him ill be over today, sunday, at 2pm. he says ok. never a thank you, nothing, no apology for all his accusations, nothing.
so i load up about 1/6th of a cord in my trailer , all white and red oak. which is pretty damn good if you asked me.. especially for free to replace the wood he let rot in the pine needles and grass. anyway...
its about 15 miles to his house, all back roads, so it takes at least 20+ mins to get there, im about 1 mile from his house. its 2:05pm on the dot (im 5 mins later i know! lol) and my phone rings.. i figure hes gona be an idiot and bother me about being 5 mins late.. nope, even worse.
he says "its raining, i dont wana do it today"... here i am a mile from your house, driving 50mph, and the road isnt even wet and i dont even need my winsheild wipers.. it was misting, at best. not even, sun was coming out. no rain, dry ground. i told him im a mile from your house, sorry, im comin! this is one of many wasted trips ive already made and im not burning more gas and time for nothing again.. IM COMIN!!!
he replies that hes not going to take the cover off his wood, in the "rain" because he doesnt want his wood getting "wet". i was shocked.. this was after i said im right around the corner, he knows i live quite a ways away. i said look, im coming, end of story, he gets all quiet.. and doesnt respond.. i said how about i just come drop this wood off, give you your $60 back for stacking, and we can forget about any future business. no answer... so i hungup..
pull into his driveway about 2 mins later, literally, and hes standing outside all pissed off looking. i drive past, hit the culdasac to turn around like i always do to make the back-in angle with the trailer better... i make it about 5 feet in reverse and he RUNS over to my truck LIVID!
"YOU TOOK WAY MORE WOOD OUTA HERE, THIS ISNT EVEN CLOSE TO HOW MUCH WOOD I GAVE YOU BACK"
he was so wrong, i didnt even know what to say..
he was all worked up, trembling, raising his voice, got real close to my truck window, so i opened the door and stepped out.
i explained to him that no firewood vendor in the world would come back and pickup wood that you left laying in your wet lawn under a tarp for 3+ months with bugs in it and exchange it for new clean wood. i told him i was doing a favor by doing so, and this red/white oak i had for him was more at least as much as the rotton wood i took out months ago. he didnt wana hear it.. just wanted to yell and scream and argue. i tried to explain to him how ive bent oiver backwards trying to make him happy because i want him to be happy and wanted to make things right for him even though hes the one in the wrong, more yelling and screaming from him. he kept interrupting me with bull#### everytime i tried to calmly explain how out of line he was and how unreasonable he was being.
i told him the worst possible way to store firewood was to leave it on the wet grass and pine needles covered air tight with a blue tarp and rocks holding it down, he interrupted me again and said "it wasnt wet, i had it tarped".. he couldnt seem to grasp the concept of moisture coming through the grass and being trapped in his bio-dome of a tarp cover he had set up.
he then instructed that i was to "just ####ing give me $100, keep the wood on your trailer and get the #### outa here"...
this is how you treat someone who goes out of their way over the course of many months to make you happy?
so not only did he want his $60 back for the wood i didnt stack (perfectly fine with me..) he thought i should PAY him $40 because in his mind the replacement oak i brought him wasnt the same amount as his rotton bug wood that i so kindly removed several months earlier?
i told him i shouldnt even be there, and that ive never had a problem like this ever, with any customer, and the same wood he claimed was infected, i have at my house, and 2 other customers houses, who ive since visited and is perfectly fine, dry and bug free! (they dont leave theirs in heaps covered in blue tarps on wet laws for 5 months)
i told him ill give you the $60 back.. and you can have this oak on my trailer, or i can take it with me.. take your pick.. he did some more grumbling and said "give me my ####in money , dump the ####in wood over there and get the #### outa here"
after unloading the wood, i walked over, handed him his $60 and left without saying a word. i could have really got into it with him..a few years ago i probably would have.. but it just wasnt worth it, you cant fix stupid.


i tried....lol

feels good to get that off my chest, this guy has been bothering me for almost 6 months back and fourth with this ####.. easy to say it wasnt worth the $500-600 i made off him for the 3cord in the first place.

the only part that i dont like about all this, aside from all my wasted gas time and labor.. he went through the trouble to find out where i live, and what my home phone number is.. kind of creepy. hope he doesnt get any stupid ideas

i just got home from dealing with this idiot, what a waste of a sunday afternoon.. thats what you get for being a nice guy though, right?
ok end of rant.
 
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I think you did good. I'm sure I would have hooked him about ten lines down in your story.

Gotta love the general public. Have a cold one, you deserve it.:dizzy:
 
WOW you ain't kidding you CAN'T fix stupid. That is the reason I got out of the customer related job I had. Once a week or better there was someone who was NEVER happy. Screw that I have a job at a factory making more $$ and wayyyyyyy better insurance.
 
thanks for reading that long story :greenchainsaw:

i still wonder how he got my home phone number, it makes me wonder what kind of creep the guy is...
all he knew was my first name, my email address, and my cell phone number , which is a pre paid phone and tied to no contracts. how in the world could he findout my home phone number, and presumably where i live? think he took my license plate number and had someone run it?

i think a few years ago i may have handled it like some of you have mentioned .. but my temper is slowly decreasing, or i am just learning how to control it and be calm when dealing with idiots like this. you try to talk calm and and respectful and lay the facts out and all they wana do is yell and insult and curse you out.. :dizzy: some way to live

i tried so hard , so many times, so keep things from going south , but it just wasnt possible, the breakup was unavoidable! lol
hes already ruined a couple potential customers i had on his street when i heard him say "heres the guy coming to pick up all the rotton wood he sold me" last time i came to pick up his junk.. he previously said his neighbor was interested in buying wood from me.. guess not now. oh well!
 
Good job keeping your calm. Although you are nicer than me, I would not have given him the 60$...although I always remain calm.

thats the only thing i am kicking myself in the ass for, everyone ive told the story to said the same thing "why did you give him the $60 back"?

the only answer i can come up with,, is so that any tie i had with him, is done. if i kept the $60 who knows what this nutcase would have done .. especially now that he apparently knows my home number and address.

although i dont think i would have been in the wrong for keeping a measly $60 for several wasted trips to his house (30+ miles round trip) towing a trailer,getting rid of his rotton bug wood, then replacing rotton wood with wood i could have sold to someone else. that would have been a good deal for only $60 if you ask me!

the sight of him standing in front of me DEMANDING " GIVE ME$100 RIGHT NOW AND GET THE #### OUTA HERE" was just hilarious... so hold on, im PAYING you to deliver free wood to you? lol, im glad he came to his senses and didnt try anythign stupid, he doesnt want a crazy 26 year old rubbing his face in dirt :chainsaw:

i heard him inside yelling with his wife while i was outside unloading.. i was waiting for him to come running out with a gun or something, good thing its new jersey :D
 
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oh well, it takes all kinds. If he bothers you again, file for a "no contact order". I had to do that to a guy who got in a car accident with me (his fault, he had no insurance) after he sent threats to me.

I used to get real pissed when this kind of stuff happened to me, when I was < 30 yrs, now that I am 36, I have developed more patience. Although, just ten minutes ago I almost lost it with my 7yrs son, who took a hammer to a blue spruce and stripped it of bark 7 feet up and was in the process of starting on a 42" white oak in my front yard.
 
Thanks for sharing. It's stories like this and my previous one that makes us be careful of who your dealing with. I hope you took pictures of the tarp tightly wrapped and the wood directly on grass.

You know what would be fun? Send him a bill in the mail for the extra time, gas, and wood and stress.

I would have wrapped him up in the tarp and dumped firewood on him...or maybe that would be a thought I would have. Good job keeping your cool but you also have to protect yourself... Technically you can call the cops and file a report just in case he does something stupid and it sounds like he is insane.

I always tend to believe people can scam other ways to make easy money instead of acting phsycho for a 100 bucks but in this case it sounds purely pyscho minded..

And the other thing is...if someone is delivering something to my house Im gonna offer lemonade and give them hugs cause they know where I live!

Scratch him off the list and in fact please do everyone around you a favor...put his name and address on craigslist or something to make sure nobody else gets burned by this prick.

30% of population insane, 60% dont use their brain, yet people continue to breed and breed.
 
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You are a really nice guy and sound like that kind of person anyone would love to do business with.

You didn't lose a customer, you lost a headache.

When I first started in business I bent over backwards to make everyone happy. Over time I got to where I could smell a problem child and then I'd get out as fast as I could.

One time I got a contract to redo a whole yard, remove trees, retaining walls, plant new lawn, the whole works, with the contract came a check for 1/3 of the total bid as down payment. In the contract was a start date three weeks out, which is pretty fast for the middle of summer, and I had been more than up front about it before when submitting the bid. A week later the husband calls me wondering when we start. I told him the same date that was in the contract and he says "I guess I didn't realize it would take you guys so long to get to us. Are you sure you can't start sooner?" I made it clear that we could not, but that we would start that day for sure. He seemed fine with that. Two days later his wife calls and wants to know where we are, she says "Where are you working now that is more important than we are?"

While I hated to do it I said "I'll be right over in about ten minutes, will that work?" She said that it would. I pulled their down payment check out of the safe and headed over with a letter stating that we would not work for them due to communication issues and their misunderstanding of contract terms. I dropped off the check and letter and wished them luck in getting their yard redone.

They were dumbfounded and said "We just wanted you to start sooner is all."

They hired a guy I know and when the work was done, and it was a good quality job too, they sued him for a bunch of totally false stuff. One of which was not completing in a timely fashion. He was in and out in two weeks, whish is very fast for the size of job. They finally dropped the suit, but cost him a bunch of time and money first.

Some people are so miserable they have to share their excess with everyone else. LOL



Mr. HE:cool:
 
"I don't know what the **** happened officer, he started swinging and I had to defend myself....so he got a broken jaw..."

no way..
26yr old firewood vendor VS 50+yr old homeowner
guess whod end up in jail? lol

i forgot to add,the guy is a canadian immigrant whos been living here since the 80's... damn canadians, no manners
 
thanks for reading that long story :greenchainsaw:

i still wonder how he got my home phone number, it makes me wonder what kind of creep the guy is...
all he knew was my first name, my email address, and my cell phone number , which is a pre paid phone and tied to no contracts. how in the world could he findout my home phone number, and presumably where i live? think he took my license plate number and had someone run it?

i think a few years ago i may have handled it like some of you have mentioned .. but my temper is slowly decreasing, or i am just learning how to control it and be calm when dealing with idiots like this. you try to talk calm and and respectful and lay the facts out and all they wana do is yell and insult and curse you out.. :dizzy: some way to live

i tried so hard , so many times, so keep things from going south , but it just wasnt possible, the breakup was unavoidable! lol
hes already ruined a couple potential customers i had on his street when i heard him say "heres the guy coming to pick up all the rotton wood he sold me" last time i came to pick up his junk.. he previously said his neighbor was interested in buying wood from me.. guess not now. oh well!

Well don't be to sure about that. If he treats all his neighbors like that (which is highly likely) they will all know that your wood has to be the best!

:laugh:

I'd keep some of the mailbox messages just in case.

7
 
no way..
26yr old firewood vendor VS 50+yr old homeowner
guess whod end up in jail? lol

i forgot to add,the guy is a canadian immigrant whos been living here since the 80's... damn canadians, no manners

you would even if he hit you first because it was on his property and his wife was home so two witnesses against one who do you think the police would believe?
 
oh well, it takes all kinds. If he bothers you again, file for a "no contact order". I had to do that to a guy who got in a car accident with me (his fault, he had no insurance) after he sent threats to me.

I used to get real pissed when this kind of stuff happened to me, when I was < 30 yrs, now that I am 36, I have developed more patience. Although, just ten minutes ago I almost lost it with my 7yrs son, who took a hammer to a blue spruce and stripped it of bark 7 feet up and was in the process of starting on a 42" white oak in my front yard.

ill keep that in mind in case he starts calling my house again

sounds like you have your hands full over there,lol
 
no way..
26yr old firewood vendor VS 50+yr old homeowner
guess whod end up in jail? lol

i forgot to add,the guy is a canadian immigrant whos been living here since the 80's... damn canadians, no manners

Yup, stay away from those canadians.....they're pretty damn shifty. Never know when they will pull out a codfish and beat you over the head with it.
 
I hope you took pictures of the tarp tightly wrapped and the wood directly on grass.

You know what would be fun? Send him a bill in the mail for the extra time, gas, and wood and stress.


30% of population insane, 60% dont use their brain, yet people continue to breed and breed.


you know, i thought about that when leaving.. i should have taken some pictures of it.. because i dont think he even understood that you arnt supposed to store wood like that(even though i told him not to several times).. and wouldnt be surprised if he corrected his error now and then tried to say all 3 cords are rotton and file some sort of claim on me...
any law against taking pictures of peoples property from the street? lol
 
Back in the late 80's my Dad and I used to sell block ends from the sawmill he worked at. He sold for something like 25 dollars per half ton truck load. We deliver a truck load for this imbecile that stacks it up tight and calls back wanting us to bring more because it didn't add up to the current amount going for a cord. My Dad said he sells by the truck load not by the cord and the guy said to either bring more or come back and get your wood. We went back and reloaded it. :)

The whole time the guy was stammering that we should really just bring more wood and my Dad didn't say a word to the man the whole time. I guess he didn't want to argue with someone too stupid or too crooked to realize the difference between block and cord wood.
 
Some people are so miserable they have to share their excess with everyone else. LOL



Mr. HE:cool:

first,thank you for the compliment , i try to treat everyone good, they are humans not just customers

but i think your last phrase that i quoted above is 100% accurate

also, good job reading those idiots and returning their check.. saved yourself a lot of aggravation, somepeople are just insane, theres no other way to explain it!!
 
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