those stupid customers

[65hoss]

Two days ago, a customer called me at 10:45 a.m. and asked it I was planning to cut her lawn that day. I said yes, and I would be there before 1 pm. When I arrive about 12:45 she has the sprinkler running in the front yard. I turn it off and the ground is very wet. I do the other lawns beside her (2 others) and then return to hers to finish. I get to the back and as I prepare to leave the back yard I start sinking the mower. She as put a water hose at the entrance to the back yard after I get in and leaves the water running. I had ruts about 4 ft. long getting out. How stupid is this?

Customer 2: Elderly woman with new house and new grand marquis, she asked me to dig up 2 holly bushes in the front and plant them in the back. I told her $35 which I thought was more than fair for probably more that 1.5 hrs of work. She said that was way to much and would only give me $20. The more I thought about it the more po'd I became. So I have now dropped her completely. People like this really irrated me. This is not the first time she has done me this way, so I know she will never pay me fairly.

[bob]

Sometimes the elderly customers can be annoying. I had one who pulled a hose across her yard 5 minutes after I got there. This is one of the reasons that I concentrate on commercial properties, rather than residential.

[chrisbolte]

Some are the best some are the worst= Weed out the bad

[Lawn Cruiser]

I had a guy who had Chemlawn ruin his lawn by over fertilizing it. This was after I had told him that I could do the fertilizing for him. He ran the sprinklers every day for at least an hour for 3 weeks. Then he had the nerve to tell me that I was ruining his lawn. I told him to find someone else, I don't think he belived me, that I was going to drop him until I sent him his final bill aling with a letter telling him I would no longer cut his lawn.

[BUSHMASTER]

I just feel i have to stand in for some of those older folks.
i have 4 customers that fall in this categorie they're real nice,stay out of my way ,pay me what i ask for ,and never forget about paying, sometimes in advance,yea every once and a while i stop and chat if i have the time , and they completely understand if i don't. thier cutomers like veryone else and they deserve a little of your time but not to much what ever is fair. i don't say to many bad things about my customers because i ilke all of them i have learned over time to pick out the ones up front that are going to be problem and qoute them high enough not to get the job and when the unexpected true weed pops in just pull it out.

[Lawn Cruiser]

Bushmaster I totally agree with you on that except for the above metioned customer most of my elderly customers are very nice and do always pay on time and apricate the job that I do for them. The elderly customer is probabley the base of most residencial contracts that are out there.

[Stinger]

Listen to Bushmaster he is right! Elderly folks may be a pain but they usually pay on time, or at least before my high dollar customers do.

[lawrence stone]

What you need to do is offer an incentive for the homeowners to pay in advance.

If they prepay for the entire year they get a 10% discount off list.

If they pay on or b/4 the first of the month b/4 any work is done they get a 5% discount off my already inflated prices.

In order to do business with me a homeowner has to buy my entire lawn care package that includes mowing (either weekly or on a 7 to 14 day cycle as weather and rainfall dictates) with
fertilizations, weed, and insect control as needed and a
dethatching and aeration in early spring and late summer.

They actually never know what it costs them per each service. By doing this they can't screw up the works and you can provide quality results that will get you more accounts in that hood.

If they don't what all the cultural practices needed to insure a fine stand of turf I just tell them to go find a
s-r-b.

[curlawngreen]

Why?

[Nathan]

Be careful with the old folks. I purchased a small company with about 40 customers, almost all of them retired. I would have to say that about 25% of them have some kind of quirk that upsets me for some reason or another. Most of the people with recurring problems have already been let go and we are working on figuring out compromises with the rest. The funny thing is that EVERY problem customer gave us a bad feeling from the very start. I guess intuition is a pretty good thing to listen to.

[HOMER]

I have skipped mowing a customer of mine that is right beside another for the last 2 weeks. Reason is when we first started a few months ago we agreed on mowing weekly until Oct. Everything was fine, I never missed a cut. A few weeks back she left a message on my machine stateing that I should feel free to start bagging her yard everytime as her precious child had drug in grass clippings from the yard. We did start bagging about every other time, even though this was not discussed in the beginning. My wife got a call the other day from this customer, she told her to "Tell your spouse that that thing he's using to bag the grass with makes a mess, I have grass all over my windowsills. She went on to say that she thought I ran over her yard with the bagger full and it was spraying all the grass out of the vent. I use a Trac-Vac and if anybody has one you know how it vents out the top and a lot of dust comes out. She finally said she was a very unhappy customer!

Frankly I don't need or want any unhappy customers so I am going to give her the opportunity to find someone else with better equiupment that doesn't leave grass clippings on the ground, doesn't blow dust anywhere, and maybe, just maybe, they will satisfy this person. I should write a letter, maybe I will...................next week.


Homer

[Ocutter]

One little old lady of mine drive me up a wall. Every time I am about 1/2 way thru the cut she appears and talks to me about everything in her life. She comes out her back door and starts talking. Keep in mind I have my mower screaming, headphones on and about 150' away and shes having a convo w/ me. So I have to stop go over to her and she what she wants. "Do My gutters look level", "look what the squirrels are doing to my beds", and my favorite "edge the driveway again so that the water from the downspouts goes to the street" even though the cement is cracked and has a pitch towards the house anyway. AARRRGGGGHHH!!!

[chrisbolte]

I have a customer who calls me about every other day to ask about the weather for the week. Thank gosh we have technology such as caller id!

[Charles]

The elderly have nothing better to do than sit around and think of ways to drive us crazy. On the good side they forget most of it lol. I get alot of the above replys. The calls every week, the walking out and interrupting at the worse times just to talk or tell me the obvious. Or tell me something that I have done for a zillion times before. To ask for my advise. Then in the next breath tell me that someone else new better what they should do. Why ask for my advise, if you are going to ignore it? And on and on. Or to blame me for the sun not coming up.......

[thelawnguy]

I had one wheelchair-bound elderly cust who drove me nuts til I realized that, as long as her field of view from the backdoor looked good anything goes.

Went to probate court on Oct 5th, Im expecting a $13,000+ check from her estate any day. Seems she had no family, left her estate to the lawn guy, mailman, housekeeper, etc. Sometimes putting up with a little quirkiness pays off.

[dylan]

If you have "interesting" customers you just have to give them something to do. Some company in the States programmed their answering machine with many, many options to keep customers busy. Pressing #7 let you hear a duck quack.

[bob]

One of my commercial accounts decided to install low voltage lights down both sides of their sidewalk. The only problem is the power wire is laying loosely on top of the grass. I didn't even trim around this for fear of damaging the wire or the lights.

[Twotoros]

Well I might as well add one . I had a lady that was off the beaten track leave a nice sign ( must have took 20 min. to make) in her lawn instucting me to not mow that week. The lawn needed it and I didn't need to drive 15 minutes out of my way. Why she couldn't have called the night before or that morn I'll never know. This is such a picky customer that she may have 'yard signed ' herself off my list next year. I was p'd off for hours.

[65hoss]

Do any of you have any trouble collecting your money at the end of the year? I have several that have been faithful all year until now. What gives?

[Evan528]

twotoros, that reminds me. About 2 months ago a house next door to one of my lawns did something similar (lol). I saw a big sheet on the lawns with bricks on each corner holding it down. I walked over and saw they had used a queen size sheet and wrote "do not mow the lawn this week". I got a good laugh out of that one! Im just glad it wasnt a customer of mine. For the all the time she wasted making the sign and i the landscaper wasted driving over... why not just leave a message?

[Toddppm]

OK i'll add one but seems real similar to some of these. we have one woman that leaves a note on her gate every week wether to cut or not. With all the rain we had this year there were still some months we only mowed once......after this season i hope i never hear from her again

[thelawnguy]

65hoss,

Seems the customers who I mow only, end of Oct is last cut, always drag out that last check til end of Nov early Dec.

I think Ill call em all this year thanksgiving day right around kickoff time.

[Twotoros]

65Hoss , Out of sight out of mind . I think when they see us every week it reminds them to pay. once we are gone or scarse they forget. Remember the 'lawn boy' doesn't have a real job.
I always have a couple accounts that have to be sent an extra couple of statements . Never the same two years in a row either. It has always been this way it seems. I just like to close out my books by 12/31 so I have to get paid by then.

[Samurai WeedWacker]

Some customers are not worthwhile. The sooner you learn this, the better off you will be. If you were a player in the stock market you certainly wouldn't buy just any old stock! You don't want just any old customer either.
In business school I learned how to classify stocks as "stars", "cash cows", "Potential stars & cash cows", and "dogs". There are subcategories such as "dogs with fleas". The "dogs", as you may have guessed, are undesireable.
Customers can be classified similarly. The customers I classify as dogs include subcategories such as "cheap charlies" and "chronic complainers."
Think about it! If you can make more money or experience less stress working for another customer, do it.

[jeffex]

I have many elderly customers too. The way I see
it is on a $25 lawn I get paid $5 to cut the
lawn and $20 for customer relations. I'm still
a little burned up about a 5 year customer who
did me wrong though. We striped her lawn like
a show piece and got 5 of her neighbors because
of our work on her lawn. She has a neighbor kid
who cuts the lawn at his house for his mother. I
made a remark to my customer one day that I'm
going to have to hire that kid. The next time
we came to cut she was full of complaints about
us not getting up leaves[ they had just started
to fall] and remarked " is that the best you can
do". The next day she called to inform us she
had hired the neighbor kid. I was po'd but I
told my wife when she calls back because he
doesn't meet her satisfaction raise her $5 per
cut.

[HOMER]

I have one customer that told me a Dr. said it was good to let the leaves stay on the ground all winter, said it enriched the soil! I told her that was the problem with her yard now with all the bare spots, I think she still beleives the Dr. Let it go I say, when she calls in the spring I'll just triple her bill for the first cut. Seems like the older they get the (un)wiser they are.

Homer

[jeffex]

Cutting lawns if fun for me great stress relief.
my customer stories keep my friends and neighbors
entertained. I'm a mailman full time and am used
to elderly people so it is good training for the
lawn business. It's a great way to get customers
too!! The lady in my story lives on my mail route
and I saw her out back yelling over to the neighbors
mother to tell her son to get her leaves up. I smiled
and waved to her as I walked by with her mail. I'm
doing the leaves at the house across from her this
week and it will drive her crazy because when we're
done it looks like we vacuumed the lawn. The kid
just uses a mulching mower and leaves little rows
of mulched up leaves. I'm going to take the high
road when she call and be nice as pie . Whith a
price increase though.