I’ve always been a fan of learning from other people’s experience, whenever possible.
But I’ve done those same types of jobs over the years, that I would never take on now. Or handle much differently.
Setting policies for your company is a rite of passage, really. When you start to see yourself in two separate roles, in a sense:
The boss man in the office, setting the rules
and the technician on the job, abiding the rules
But the great thing about self employment is, boss man is always in the back of your head, and can make up a new rule and whisper it in your ear to get you (the technician) out of a tricky, unexpected circumstance.
e.g., you arrive at the job to see that the A/C units haven’t been removed, as promised. Boss man whispers: “time for a new rule”. You, the technician, politely inform the customer that company policy is to not remove A/C units, or do any other disassembly. If they want those windows cleaned, they need to remove them themselves, or have those windows skipped and deducted from the bill. You state this to the customer as a long-standing fact, one that you do not have the authority to circumvent.
I also agree with the sentiment that liability insurance should be treated as a last resort. My personal threshold for making a claim would probably be in the $3k-5k range. But I’ve heard some business owners state that they’ll pay as much as $10k to avoid making a claim against their insurance.
The main reason for that is not because of the premium going up, but because you may be refused coverage altogether if you make too many claims, or too large a claim, within a certain timeframe.
This is roughly the example my insurance agent gave me when I inquired about a window I broke a few years ago: You make a $500 claim this year to fix a window. No increase in premium. Then you power wash a house with leaky siding next year and cause $20k in water damage. Your insurance pays the claim, and then drops your coverage. No one else will take you on. You’ve become uninsurable. Had you simply paid for the broken window out of pocket, your insurance would not have dropped you for making the water damage claim. Just an example.
I was holding the squeegee too softly. It started happening to me again today and I noticed the left side of my squeegee was leaving everything behind. Held it more firmly favoring the left (not politically) and nothing but clean windows.
Sorry to hear about your wife glad she’s ok. A bit of advice it’s not your responsibility to remove the Air conditioners. If you were nice enough to do it they should be very grateful
If you do do it again make sure they know you’ll do it , but i usually don’t.
For me if they don’t remove them those windows don’t get cleaned.
