I had a new customer call me because one of his gutters were leaking out of the end opposite of his downspout. He knew water was backed up and wasn’t draining properly; he just wanted this one, 6’ section taken care of…it also happened to be 30’ off the ground. I looked up the house on Google maps (no trees around), said it would be $75 just to ladder up and take care of it - in my mind 15 minutes of work, show up and leave. I offered my “Deluxe gutter cleaning” on the whole home for $155. Since he had just moved in and didn’t trust the previous owner’s quality of work - he could see construction debris in some sections of gutter, he thought it’d be a good idea to have everything cleaned.
I showed up, looked in all of his gutters and they were almost all empty, except for a few nails and a piece of lumber placed over one downspout hole. Probably 100’ of gutter, 3 ladder moves, 1 gallon of debris, and I flushed all the downspouts in 20 minutes.
When it came to the dripping gutter 30’ off the ground, the issue was that it wasn’t sloped properly and had 2" of water at one end. I explained to him the issue and said I would attempt to fix it. I removed the gutter supports, but couldn’t get the section to lower - downspout was strong, screwed, nailed and painted to the siding; the gutter had multiple nails behind a piece of flashing that I couldn’t remove and kept it in place. I resecured the gutter hangers, swallowed my pride and told him that I couldn’t charge him because I didn’t resolve his original issue. He felt bad and at least owed me something for showing up. He said, “Just give me a number!”
As I held his $75 dollar check in my hand on the way home we exchanged texts.
I ripped it up and will see how it plays out. It might be worth the $75 to gain more clients down the road because of this.
Adding a downspout to the dripping end is sometimes the best way to fix the problem. This happens quite often and I just refer them to my roof and gutter guy. My roof and gutter guy in turn refers me to gutter cleaning jobs. This way everybody wins.
A friend of mine from Texas told me that not long after moving to a wealthy Dallas suburb, the 70’s country music star Charley Pride was out mowing his lawn when a female neighbor stopped her car at the curb and said “sir my lawn man is sick this week and I have a party tonight, would please come and cut my grass when you finish here?” Mr Pride (who is black) agreed and went and cut the woman’s grass. When he finished he went to the door to tell her he was finished. She thanked him grabbed her check book and asked “who do I make the check out to?” He said “Charley Pride.” She turned pale with embarrassment and profusely apologized for mistaking a country music great for a yard man. In order to not further embarrass him she said “would you like for me to pay you?” to which he responded “of course, I did the work didn’t I?” So with that Mr Pride accepted, signed and cashed the check which the woman then kept as a memento. The moral of the story is, you did the work, you should get paid for what you did.
That’s a real classy thing to do. Customer for life, I am sure. And I like the way that you only have one page on your website. Interesting, never thought of doing that. Keep it simple. But, check your grammar. There is a little mistake. See, your already getting returns on being a nice guy.
I have a Christmas light customer who owns a large oilfield equioment company. A couple years ago i needed to move a playhouse from one yard to our new yard over fences. I needed a crane and so phoned him and he gladly sent a truck and operator for a few hours. I went and did his lights that winter and when it came time to pay i said i was not going to charge him (about a $350 job and 4 hours or so). He was blown away that i would do that. Keep in mind his truck and operator goes for about $250/hr so i felt it was the least i could do. This is an 8000sq ft house on 100’ lakefront so he is very well off and said you sould be amazed how many people take advantage of that and just expect him to do things/help out for nothing. He is a very good (and happy) customer of mine. A few hours of my time will go a long way to keeping happy customers and continuing to build a good name.
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My feeling is that I didn’t accomplish the task that I was originally chosen to do. He knew the rest of the downspouts functioned normally and I upsold him something, in essence, he didn’t need.
[MENTION=4249]ViewRenew[/MENTION], very wise move. I agree with the others who have mentioned that you were certainly entitled to some compensation for the job you did- at the minimum the $75 originally quoted. But you looked beyond the immediate situation and empathized with the customer in regard to their expectations, hopefully building a relationship instead of just a transaction. Again, kudos.
