What is everyone’s cancellation policy.
I really need to make efforts to reduce the number of last minute cancellations and reschedules.
What is your strategy.
get a deposit
I’d say if it happens on the regular bumblebee is right. Ask for a down payment to lock in the work.
What is the most common reason for needing to reschedule? Perhaps there is a way to avoid some cancellations when making the appointment. If you don’t know why they are rescheduling you should be asking.
For example if the Friday is before a holiday, such as this year the big ones are July 4 and Labor Day, I remind the customer of the holiday. There is about a 30-50% chance they will realize they can’t do that day so I find another.
$99 Deposit gets kept if they cancel without 24 hours notice, ( if you cant fill the spot )
That’s pretty generous. Our policy is $100 deposit kept if they don’t give us at least 48 hours notice, regardless of whether we can fill the spot (it’s not really any of their business, imho, and it seems there’s always some little commercial account on the back burner that I can do). We are pretty understanding about emergency situations, though. And if they were able to get a friend to take their spot, we would definitely refund the deposit.
To give some perspective, after 3 years we have yet to keep a deposit for someone cancelling on us. The handful of last-minute cancellations we’ve had were all emergency related, and we just let the customer either reschedule or we refunded the deposit.
Never had many customers postpone or cancel…
Usually it’s because something came up and they cant be at home and they need to reschedule, usually they come to me with a new date without me having to ask, and if i can fit them in for that one…
Happy to manoeuvre for good customers but i sure as hell wont bend over backwards for people to mess me about. If that was to happen i just wouldn’t take them on again.
But every one has their own way - just so long as you stick by what works for you.
The people that are difficult to schedule are usually folks that are selling their home, particularly when construction is involved. They don’t understand that other service companies (GC’s, carpet, paint, powerwashing, etc.) sometimes are running slow or need to push out and the client has everything planned out, but it doesn’t work that way. I was just patient and fit them into my schedule on a weekend. They have 3 more homes that they want me to do. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.
I put it in a way that it’s understood that I’m busy, and if a reschedule is necessary, I can’t make any guarantees, but I’ll do what I can. That’s my policy. I’m new though, so it’s nice to be a good guy and still charge like the big crews. Detail>Speed for residential.
I feel like its a pretty fine line. I like having the policy in place so my time is taken seriously. I dont ever want to have to use but its there so I dont have to. And If you do actually enforce one you probably wont be cleaning there windows again. Also a “deposit” charge in the eyes of a CC company isnt really valid. If that customer disputed the charge with the CC company they automatically win as there is no signature backup of the charge. I have seen it happen a few times.
Im in strong favor of taking deposits, but Im against it when it actually comes down to enforcing them.
Well it seems people just do not respect my time at all, I get really lame excuses, totally last minute cancellation like 7-8 pm where people tell me their mother made a hair appointment for tommarrow during our agreed upon time. I have had people cancel last minute this year for their wifes birthday (didnt believe it, he just thought it would be something I could not argue against), I had a customer cancel because she was overwhelmed with her kids baseball schedule, I get no call no shows a number of times per year. I had a customer a few weeks ago cancel because at the last minute they got an invite to go up to a family members cabin.
Its not a big deal if someone cancels weeks in advance, but if you are working 10-12 hour days, where do you find the time to get out the phone book,even if you have three days notice. I find it really hard to fill.
I know many other industries from maids, to doctors, to charter boat fishing captains ask for as much as three days notice, and if you bail last minute they bill you the entire cost. Same with no shows.
I agree! I have only had one customer who abused our policy. After cleaning her windows 2x/year for 3 years, she started canceling. Usually either the night before or the morning of, she would cancel and try to reschedule. She would do this 2 - 3 times. I finally had to tell her I wouldn’t even put her on the schedule anymore unless she paid full price in advance with no refund or “applied to” future cleans. I haven’t heard from her in two years.
I’ve only had a handful of the last minute cancellations, but when I do it does mess up that entire day.
I try my best to work with them to reschedule when they want to cancel. If they don’t want to reschedule then I just note in their file to follow up with a phone call on 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, then send a postcard at 8 weeks.
If you’re having a lot of cancellations it may be time to institute some sort of deposit for your services. I don’t do it but there are plenty of guys on here that ask for them. I think that may help with the cancellations, then with the deposit of say $100 you let them know cancellations in 24/48 hours (or whatever you choose) will be charged $50 from the deposit as a cancellation fee and they get the other $50 refunded.
I dont really know, just tossing out some ideas. I’ve been thinking of adding a policy like this, but I haven’t been burned as frequently as it seems you’ve been lately.
Good luck!
Mike Radzik
Pro Window Cleaning
Central Massachusetts
Home
Sent from my iPhone using Window Cleaning Resource
I rarely get cancelations, but they usually give me plenty of time to fill the slot. If someone has a habit of not giving enough notice, like if they do it more than once, then I have the choice of refusing their business next time they try to schedule.
I guess it really depends how tight you schedule. I usually let people off the first time and from then on they go to the back of the line. I can usually always grab someone from the next day to fill the spot. You may lose a little bit of time but gain a loyal customer. If it is a recurring problem with the same customer then they get bumped to the end of the line which for them means a 3 month wait. Most of my customers are now on a recurring basis, eg. 2nd Monday in May at 10:00 every year. They get a reminder the week before and it only takes them one miss to train them into never missing an appointment again. I treat my customers well and they in turn treat me well. To me, charging an additional fee for a lost appointment won’t give you a loyal customer. You may just lose a customer and never be able to recover that fee anyway. A big part of gaining a good business is on time scheduling and a good reminder system.
