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View Full Version : stupid rich customers


Ramairfreak98ss
05-16-2009, 10:34 AM
Guy has a 1mil+ home, not even his daily home, he lives in NYC and works there for some IT company.. i used to be in IT and was heavily into it and never in my life could i have made anywhere near the type of money this guy must.

He wanted to barter down our mulching/trimming price. I cut it from $700 to $625 because he also signed up for bi-weekly lawn service for his 1.5+ acre development home on a corner.

He is rarely there. We cut his lawn may 7th for the FIRST time, it wasnt overgrown really though, its a 3yr old home, lots of dirt/mud, nothing is THAT established yet. I was on site, the guys edge the massive sidewalks, trimmed good etc. He calls up TODAY, may 16th and wants his lawn cut because with the rain, its too tall, he has guests coming over lol. I said bud, your gonna have to tell us mid week to add you on our schedule when your on your off week, not the day of or especially a weekend, were not even mowing lawns now until wednesday in that area for residential homes.

Then he complains about the mulching/trimming we did for $625.00 May 5th, 11 days ago. He said his front sidewalk "to his house" is all stained black from the mulch and that the mulch isnt black its "brown". I looked at it the next day, since it rained the day after and surely, it wasnt pitch black like when we first apply it but was still black. He HAD to have his mulching/trimming done asap so we kept him on schedule. You all know you cant apply dyed mulches within 24hrs of rain, honestly its more like 36-48 hours if its not sunny/dry and warm out each day. I KNEW he was going to be a royal pita after his persistenance in the scheduling, i made sure every plant/bush/tree was trimmed nicely in the front, all front beds power edged, mulched great etc.

We put down pre emergent, pulled all the weeds, which there was a lot to start with. He said theres tons of weeds coming up. I wont pull a single one more though since hes going to call again next week then about the same damn thing. He should have had better service, or taken better care of his lawn and landscape prior. His old company is in my town and are reputable... its just cheap with a big property.

Im going out tomorrow to take a look at it for him, i wont be doing anything else though. He just needs to pay up, he got a lot for the money already, they just like to complain about something to try and wheel and deal after the fact and get more taken off the bill or something for free:nono:

IMAGE
05-16-2009, 11:25 AM
I hate ppl like that! I did a dethatching job last spring that the guy said it looked like crap. Called and left me a dirty message. And called another LCO to come see if it was a bad job. The other LCO told him it looked great. He called me back and said well I don't think it looks good, but this other company said you did a great job, so come over and pick up your check for the dethatching and spring clean up. When I get there he asks if I am gonna clean the TIRE MARKS off his driveway from the mower. I was like WTF no, they just happen and will go away on thier own. Long story short, he weaseled his way out of paying for the spring clean up, and only paid for the dethatching. He is now on my "blocked" list.

shovelracer
05-16-2009, 03:19 PM
There is a reason why they have what they have. I had a client in a builder upgraded house maybe 950K in a 750-800K development. They were fine for years. Then last year they started with the little free this and more of that garbage. This year I raised the price a few dollars to make up for the expected additional services and they left. This year someone has been hacking up the 2 acre lawn with a mower with a real uneven cut. This would have never flown when we were there. Well we still take care of the rest of the development.

Got a last minute phone call 2 days ago about the ex client getting mulch done so all my clients want it done. Keep up with the jones. Rumor was they were getting it today so we pulled a few overtime strings and did the rest this morning. Mainly cause I wanted to see who was there. We rolled in at 7AM and mulch at 7:15. 40 yards on 3 houses and we were done by 12:30. At 9AM an early 90's civic rolled in with 4 young boys, 3 maybe 14 and the driver 17-18, and 2 wheelbarrows strapped to the roof. 2 worked while 2 watched and they took turns pulling the weeds. At 10AM the owner, father of 2 of the boys, came in a 1500 chevy, followed by a 25-30 yard load of mulch. This account has never used more than 8 yards any time I did it at 2-3" thick. Lots of shrubs. At one point the father was yelling at his younger son in russian, but I was able to make out that they where working too slow and he had hopes to get to another job today as well. I used to know a few russian girls in my younger years, Da. When we left at 12:30 they had mulched half the beds with another 4 or so yards to go, except 1 large problem. There was still about 20+ yards of mulch in the middle of the driveway. That will sure make it hard to get the AMG back in the garage.

Well I couldn't help but laugh as we pulled away SSL in tow cause they got exactly what they paid for. Had they not been so rude about the small price increase I would have gladly offered to remove the large pile of cedar for a small fee, trucking charge, and of course 16 yards of free cedar. Good thing illegal child labor is cheap cause this guy will eat more than he makes today, unless of course he just piles it 12" thick to get rid of it.

Stuff like this only happens in these types of developments.

JNyz
05-16-2009, 07:45 PM
Guy has a 1mil+ home, not even his daily home, he lives in NYC and works there for some IT company.. i used to be in IT and was heavily into it and never in my life could i have made anywhere near the type of money this guy must.

He wanted to barter down our mulching/trimming price. I cut it from $700 to $625 because he also signed up for bi-weekly lawn service for his 1.5+ acre development home on a corner.

He is rarely there. We cut his lawn may 7th for the FIRST time, it wasnt overgrown really though, its a 3yr old home, lots of dirt/mud, nothing is THAT established yet. I was on site, the guys edge the massive sidewalks, trimmed good etc. He calls up TODAY, may 16th and wants his lawn cut because with the rain, its too tall, he has guests coming over lol. I said bud, your gonna have to tell us mid week to add you on our schedule when your on your off week, not the day of or especially a weekend, were not even mowing lawns now until wednesday in that area for residential homes.

Then he complains about the mulching/trimming we did for $625.00 May 5th, 11 days ago. He said his front sidewalk "to his house" is all stained black from the mulch and that the mulch isnt black its "brown". I looked at it the next day, since it rained the day after and surely, it wasnt pitch black like when we first apply it but was still black. He HAD to have his mulching/trimming done asap so we kept him on schedule. You all know you cant apply dyed mulches within 24hrs of rain, honestly its more like 36-48 hours if its not sunny/dry and warm out each day. I KNEW he was going to be a royal pita after his persistenance in the scheduling, i made sure every plant/bush/tree was trimmed nicely in the front, all front beds power edged, mulched great etc.

We put down pre emergent, pulled all the weeds, which there was a lot to start with. He said theres tons of weeds coming up. I wont pull a single one more though since hes going to call again next week then about the same damn thing. He should have had better service, or taken better care of his lawn and landscape prior. His old company is in my town and are reputable... its just cheap with a big property.

Im going out tomorrow to take a look at it for him, i wont be doing anything else though. He just needs to pay up, he got a lot for the money already, they just like to complain about something to try and wheel and deal after the fact and get more taken off the bill or something for free:nono:

The first problem is you knew he was going to be a pita and you took him on anyway. Second, why would you even think about doing a bi-weekly lawn? I stopped doing those clients 18 years ago.

Ramairfreak98ss
05-17-2009, 11:46 AM
The first problem is you knew he was going to be a pita and you took him on anyway. Second, why would you even think about doing a bi-weekly lawn? I stopped doing those clients 18 years ago.

yeah we still have a small handful of bi-weeklys that are "ok" accounts, but generally ALL complaints/problems come from the bi-weeklys not looking nice enough for what the client is "paying" ya know how it goes.

I think just saying we only cut weekly will just weed out the problematics right up front so ive just about had it by now, ive had a few dozen calls in the last couple weeks for bi-weeklys that have YET to have their grass mowed yet... dont want to pay the up front price for their first cut/bagged, waste our time or you even get the ones that want every 3 weeks cut or longer like once a month lol.. we all know who they are.