I just landed an HOA a couple months ago and have done one job so far, its regular, signed contract…they called 3 weeks ago and had me bid a slightly larger building and after haggling over price agreed on something fair. It was scheduled for today, last night at about 7:00pm I get an email from them saying they need to reschedule for a couple weeks later that “the board” wants to hold off for a couple weeks. I only have 2 guys working for me and now the whole day is trashed.
My question is, should I start charging for that? Say if they reschedule outside of a week its fine, but a day before?? Does anyone charge a rescheduling fee for commercial? If so, do you have it in your contract, and if you do, could you please paste it in your comment so I can add the proper wording?
This is not the first time it has happened to me, other customers have done it too, just not this close to the day the job was to be done. Any help would be appreciated.
I’ve never had that problem with commercial accounts, only have a few of them, but on residential I had that happen to me, but never did nothing. Should have something in writing for it, but if I know/feel that is there really a problem I just suck it up, but if they’re being just irresponsible or decided to stay in bed that they I’d rather dump that customer and move on. A cancellation fee won’t compensate for the loss anyway.
But that just me and I feel like I should do something about it, but that’s the way I handle it.
I actually like when this happens(it does not happen a lot). When they do this, I use that day to do all the stuff I say I never have time for…whether its to do some estimates, calling customers or office work. Again, this is now when its really busy and time is at a premium…on a slower week, I would probably be ****ed!
I usually don’t do this on residential accounts, unless the customer gets pushy, but on all commercial accounts I charge a 15% fee. The following is taken ver batum from my Terms and Conditions that is on everything I do.
• A termination fee may apply to contracts or agreements that are discontinued with less than 72 hours notice to a live representative of I DO WINDOWS. If contact is not made with a real person, not a voice mail or message recording machine, less than three (3) days prior to the beginning of a scheduled service date, the customer must pay a fee of 15% of the entire cleaning project for breaking the contract. Fee does not apply if the service is rescheduled to be completed in a reasonable amount of time.
Although I have never had problems with my commercial jobs rescheduling. They are usually very eager to get their windows clean and loathe to cancel a job.
I’d try & keep them sweet. Tell them the truth, say you had set up the job for the day & it was too last minute to fill the days workload, before giving them your new terms of penalisation. Ask them to give at least a weeks notice in future & make sure you stick it on the invoice.
You know I use this most with General Contractors. Most of the time they have found someone that will do our work and other stuff for cheaper than I will. But when I hit them with the T&C and let them know that I am not letting them blow me off, they usually want to reschedule quickly.
I could never get away with charging a fee for rescheduling. The competition is so fierce they would drop me like a rock. I’ve lost accounts I thought I would never lose. Even though we did everything perfect and I ran around doing extra stuff for free they went with the cheaper bid. I can’t afford to give them a reason to call another company.
I know that this might sound weird, but have you raised your prices lately? I am not sure that this would work with contractors, but homeowners don’t always go for the cheapest. Don’t take me wrongly, some still do, but I try to put a spin on the estimate that it is a “exclusive” or “luxury” item. This sometimes stimulates some of the wealthier clients to purchase based on their own feeling of what they are getting for their big money spent.
I am sorry for this being a little off topic for the thread but I wanted to comment on Matt’s comment. I am not even sure it applies to this topic, but it is what came to mind.
Matt, you may already do this, but one of the best pieces of advice someone has given me is that your customers aren’t buying your service. They are buying a feeling they get when you provide a solution to their problem and more importantly sometimes, a feeling of importance because you treated them very well. I might suggest a book called [U][I]How To Win Customers And Keep Them For Life[/I][/U], by Michael LeBouf.
If you can sell those contractors on the fact that you’ll perform the service they need for a good price (maybe not the cheapest), you’ll do it right the first time around, you carry insurance to cover incidents, and you stand behind your work, you’ll be able to get away with charging more.
For example, I have an account with a guy that builds hotels. He asked me (actually I cold called him) earlier this year this year for a quote for a three story CCU job. I got kinda personal with him over a beer and a smoke and asked him where I needed to be price-wise. He said middle of the road. Actually I came him high-end, but with the proper attitude and detailed description of what I could offer, he chose to go with us. He even has us doing another one this fall.
All because I presented my case better than the other guys.
