night call for nothing!!!

jim f

got a call from a cust this evening. she said her boyfriend's house has no heat. ok... so i make contact with the boyfriend, explain charges and situations and he agrees to have us come out. so i call my guy on call,.... i call the cust back to confirm that our tech will be there in one half hour and to make sure he is there. so a half hour goes by and i get a call from my tech that there is another companys truck in the driveway. WHAT?? i said!!
so i call the cust back and he gives me the run around.so i sennd my tech on home with an appology and time and a half for his time. i'm sure this happened to most of you once or twice. how would you have handled the situation.
thanks jim f.
this just happened 1/2 hour ago and had to vent.

John Fernandez

Sometimes.........

we get "the business" being in the service industry, one incident the still burns me up just thinking about it, similar to your service call, this fellow I have known for a long time, calls, he says he needs to have a washer/dryer hook-up for his girlfriend at her house, no problem, we do about a days worth of work, send him the bill a day or two later, no reply, finally I confront him, he says that he and the girlfriend broke-up and she is long gone, he won't pay the bill because it was "her house" and was just doing a favor for her. Favors like that we can do without !!

Paul Mitchell

We have all been there

One day this summer I happened to pull up to a house for a no A/C call. Just as I got there another truck pulled up. Now the homeowner comes out ... He starts asking us our charges, on and on. I finally looked at the other guy and said I dont know about you but I am outta here. He agreed and we both left. Was about 7:00 in the evening. Felt real good.

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Dingo

Awesome

Willing to bet this felt great... It's the stuff dreams are made of.

As to an answer to the original posting ... send the clown a bill. Let him worry about it ... when he doesn't pay it, turn it over to collections and let it die. The little bit of time and aggrivation it costs him will help balance the scale.

FWIW,

Mike

hot_rod

me too

Here's my story: http://www.contractormag.com/articles/column.cfm?columnid=68

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Unknown

Outstanding, Dave

Very constructive, positive plan that takes care of the tradesman and the deserving customers.

Noel

hot_rod

screening

Our answering service helps screen them now. Our on-call mechanics appreciate getting a decent night's sleep too. You're going to like this December's colunmn, which deals with a plumber just starting out in business and an after-hours service call. I know him well

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