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| Businesses that don't seem that interested in doing work; Strange phenomenon around here. | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 15 2015, 12:57 PM (1,402 Views) | |
| cwatkin | Nov 15 2015, 12:57 PM Post #1 |
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I have picked up several jobs from people who say "You are the only one who answered the phone" or "You are the only one who returned my call". I have told a couple people interested in starting small businesses that it is important to call people back about potential jobs and not just ignore them. It seems like this is so simple it doesn't need explaining but around here it does. I have it with a few right now. A guy called wanting a computer and we got talking about his business. He sells and builds custom log homes in the rustic style which is what I eventually want to build for myself out on my 48 acres in the woods. I went to their website and really liked the examples shown there. They use native logs and stone and aren't the prefab log homes that are basically one step above a trailer. These look like something that might have been built 100 years ago but with modern wiring, plumbing, and insulation. I called him back and told him I was really interested in looking at these log homes more based on their website. He said he would bring me some photos and literature when he got the computer. I called him twice and each time he said he would call back tomorrow. I never heard back. Well I guess if someone might spend tens of thousands or even $100,000 or more on your stuff, you can just ignore them??? Then there is a small local coupon book that is handed out at many businesses. I picked one up and it had a phone number and e-mail to contact for advertising. I contacted them and got the ball rolling. They designed the ad I wanted and I approved it. I told them I wanted to meet up and pay them for a couple months whenever it was convenient. They always had some answer that they were busy so I told them to just call me whenever they are free and I will make a point to meet them. They have never called back. Basically the promise of getting paid isn't enough to get these people to pay attention to a person who had the intention of paying them 100%. I have bid on another job that requires 2 other competitive bids before they will award the project to someone. Guess what??? I can't get the project because no one else will return phone calls or provide a competitive bid. I am the only one who provided a bid. They want the work done but can't get the other required bids as per company policy. Then there was the consignment shop where I was thinking about getting a booth or case to sell stuff. I called 3 times and never got a call back. With me it is either the 3rd time is the charm or 3 strikes and your out. Obviously they weren't too interested in getting another vendor. I took my GF to a Thai place around there that recently opened up. The server could barely be bothered to take our order. Some friends or family had come in and the server seemed more focused on socializing with them rather than taking care of a paying customer. I asked for water to drink and they finally brought the water after the bill had been left. It was like it would have looked better for them if they hadn't brought it at all at that point. Then there was a person who had something go wrong with a computer component they purchased from me. It was a laptop power supply. I offered to exchange it for an identical one and told them where I would be and that we could meet up. They said they would call me when they were there. Well I ended up having to go about my day and kept telling them where I was going to be. They kept saying they would be there soon. Anyway, I called them when it was getting late and I was headed back from town. They said they would call me some other time to meet up and I never heard back. Has anyone else experienced this? I hear complaints about this frequently around here about all varieties of businesses. I am fully convinced that there are many businesses that fail simply because people can't be bothered to take care of customers or those interested in being customers. This is a big turn off and I am unlikely to try and do business with places that have done this to me in the future. Conor |
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| punkozuna | Nov 15 2015, 04:12 PM Post #2 |
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We have a heck of a time getting handymen/contractors to come out and do jobs for us. I am used to contractors bidding jobs, getting a down payment, get the work about half done and then getting hard to find to come finish the work. Lately, they won't even come out and see the job or they will look and promise to get back to me with an estimate and never call back. It's so bad that I've taken to doing stuff around the house that I'd rather pay someone to do. I can't understand it either. It's like they don't want to make money. If the job was too small, not their area of expertise or just something they don't want to do, fine. But they never say any of that, they just never call back even when they say they will. I guess if reliably showing up and getting their work done was part of their character, they would have gone into another line of work - like 9-5 corporate stuff. |
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| cwatkin | Nov 15 2015, 06:33 PM Post #3 |
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I have heard the same thing about household contractors myself. I am wondering if they are kinda passing up the residential jobs because of getting burned by those that don't pay. I was talking to someone who does COMMERCIAL HVAC only because he got burned doing residential. It iss against the law to remove a part even if they don't pay once it is installed. It just got to be too large of a hassle to deal with residential and went all commercial. As for small jobs, that is easy. You just bid them with a minimum charge. Many are OK with this. Some people get all pissy and say it is too high for such a small job but you have to come out and get setup, etc. Conor |
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| 2000Firefly1.3L | Nov 15 2015, 09:06 PM Post #4 |
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This is not a problem isolated to the USA either. We get all the same bull. Don't even get me started on craiglist with entitled princesses who expect special treatment before they even show up to buy a potential something. |
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| Woodie | Nov 16 2015, 04:44 AM Post #5 |
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I contacted five different businesses trying to get my turbo rebuilt for the Firefly before anyone got back to me. How hard is it to return a phone call or e-mail? Even if it was to say "screw you and your minuscule turbo, ain't nobody got time for dat", I would have appreciated some sort of response. Why bother having a website claiming to offer a service? |
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| metroschultz | Nov 16 2015, 07:54 AM Post #6 |
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Please just call me; "Schultz"
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You must have been to the same one we went to last weekend. Same server as well. Only, we never got the bill. I went to the bar and explained that we were ready to pay & leave - she said "you waitress will be over shortly" . then she went in the back. several minutes later - Barb said she was sick, so I pulled a handful of cash from my pocket - put it on the table - the we got up & left. I'm not sure if it was enough, I did some quick math in my head, but am unsure of the cost of the drinks. My reasoning - if you wanted to be paid, you would have brought me a bill. |
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| cwatkin | Nov 16 2015, 12:19 PM Post #7 |
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Yeah, there was a whole thread on Craigslist and all the nuts here a while back. My solution for them wanting "special treatment" which is usually wanting me to drive it part or all the way to them is to quote them my service charge and hourly rate to bring it to them. They head my way if they want it or lose interest at this point. I ALWAYS like to make people come all the way to me. It is a psychological trick because once they get here they have invested time and fuel, they are less likely to try haggling or back out. I have gone to great effort to take things to people before and they have nothing invested. They say either take or price or take it home with you. They have nothing invested. It is all on me at this point. Conor |
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| nwgeo | Nov 16 2015, 04:28 PM Post #8 |
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For contractors/small business....most of the time it is they are overbooked. Most of the time they don't charge enough on the jobs to cover their marketing, setup and follow up time. I do part time contracting. I had a guy who asked if I was interested in doing a small concrete job. I said yes but then had other jobs that ran over and so I did not call back....he did not call back either. |
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| cwatkin | Nov 17 2015, 11:59 AM Post #9 |
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I know about the not charging enough to cover costs. I used to do this until I realized and then pretty much made sure I covered the costs. I charge for drive time beyond my "home" area. I have had jobs that take 5 minutes but are charged for 2 hours of drive time. I also charge a $35 service charge. This is a rural area so sometimes distances are an issue. If you don't charge for drive time, you will lose money for sure. If people are unwilling to pay for this they likely won't get service. I have had people tell me I am the first one to show up so I suspect others don't follow the same model and realized they would have lost money. Conor Edited by cwatkin, Nov 17 2015, 12:00 PM.
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| DesmondGhostRider | Nov 17 2015, 03:23 PM Post #10 |
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I'm a welder and fabricator when my back allows it and I have a lot of problems with this as well. On the business to customer side: Biggest problem I run into is people don't want to pay for it. I can make awesome stuff, but no one is ever willing to pay a far price. they all want a deal and by deal I mean they want it for free or cheaper than the shitty Chinese copy they can go buy at a retail store. I'm currently sorta between jobs right now because the owner of the place I'm working at underbid us into the dirt last summer. Whole summer of work for really nothing but debt, more back pain, and stress. Struggled all summer and had to resort to using credit cards because I didn't want to abandon the shop and leave the owner trying to figure out how to finish the job alone. (its just me him, and an 80 yr old guy who hangs round) Now I'm swimming in debt in a way I didn't think I'd allow myself to ever sink to. I quit the job shortly after completing the underbid job and tried job hunting. Its been 2 months of applying everywhere and no luck. Yesterday old boss called and said he had a few jobs that he needed a 2nd hand on and he could pay me by the job on just the stuff he couldn't do alone. So now I'm kinda working part time there because bills are due and I'm desperate. I wish we were busy enough to just support me working there all the time. I do awesome work and even know how to design and use the plasma cutter now. (side note if you have something you want made I can do it. I was going to build some of those under body braces but there was such a backlash when someone on here made a few to sell that wasn't the first guy to do it that I decided against it. Might make one now that I'm driving metros again. I can do even do stainless or aluminum parts.) Most places would have just abandoned the job. Same homeowner had a guy out to cut down a bunch of trees. And he tried his shit of adding in stuff to the job and the tree guy just said fuck it and left and moved on. My boss tried to be adaptive with our project to make the homeowner happy...but there's realistically only so much you can edit before you start losing money. anyways The thing I hear the most is people will just go to lowes or home depo if they are going to "spend that much". People don't care about the quality of work or the item, they want it now, cheap, and easily replaced if it breaks. Throw away and replace economy wins again. I can make stuff just purpose built that will never break and its never really that much more than the big box stores stuff that only lasts a year or two at best. A good example of this is my Mother in law. (divorce going through next month so not an in law for much longer) She is the cheapest white trash bitch youve ever seen. Addicted to pain pills and everything. Her house was once a trailer and now represents a pile of money and wasted supplies. She had 2 add ons built...on a trailer and both of them are shit. The first one had a bad roof so instead of paying someone to come put a new roof on it she put plastic paint tarps on it to "save money" She replaces the tarp once a month bc they keep leaking. Damn tarps cost $25 each and it takes 2 to do the roof. So 50 a month. Then the damage got so bad that she had some family come tear down the roof and put another one on, but apparently real supplies are too expensive so they used discounted non treated lumber for the whole thing, nailed it all on, and then tried to fill in all the holes and gaps in with tar. Now shes furious that she spend 1500 to get all that only to have it already be full of mold. Whole add on is coming down next month bc its so full of black mold that it cant be salvaged. She also cant see her grandson at her house bc he has bad asthma and cant even enter the house without having an attack and everyone else is always getting colds and stuff. This same thought process can be found everywhere. Hell look at my early posts and how I tried to cut corners. Looking back I cant believe what I did in my ignorance, but knowing what I know now its almost always worth spending the bit extra to do the job right. The question is how do you get customers to feel the same way and give you their business? The only customers I find that feel this way are the ones who have earned their own wealth. If they have worked their way up then they know how it works and to trust the contractor to know their skills and the project. ====================================================== Young people just dont like talking on the phone. If someone hasnt called me back within a day I usually text before I call again. People who have ever been called about bills or debts dont like answering the phone either. If I'm working with someone that I know has had money problems and isn't answering the phone I just text If I try to contact someone 3 times and they don't contact me back then that's it they are dead to me, time to move on. If they show back up and want to work with me they are going to be doing the leg work and I'm just not going to be as flexible with them. I'm not going to work on the price or try to compromise on jobs as much. They can pay base price for base work or extra for non base work. (for me this means tig welding or extra paint stuff and the pretty add ons) There is always a rush to get enough cash for me that after 3 attempts that person has already wasted so much time that I don't want to stick around to see how much more of it they will waste. I think each side has a responsibility to communicating if they want something done. If I'm a customer I don't want to be pestered about giving someone my business and as a business I don't want t be chasing around someone who doesn't care enough to pull the trigger. As a business you have to advertise your skill set and what services you can do, but you shouldn't be calling around begging for business. As individuals I think we should be aware of how well we are communicating and what signals we are sending. If your not ready to do business or cant handle any more business either don't start the conversation or be ready to be upfront with your intentions. Also if your one of those people who is always pricing everything "just to see" or "just in case" or "when I get some money" fuck you. no really. You know you don't have the money to pay for it so why are you wasting my time playing out some fantasy about what upgrade you want to do to your blah blah blah. I don't mind doing price checks or estimates for people, I mean the guy that wants a truck bed cover designed and priced and hes only got $20 to spend on the whole thing and he just wants to talk. There are so many of those around here and sadly almost all of them are over 35 and have never made it. They've lost the sense of urgency that comes with youth and just run around wasting everyone's time with your window shopping, piss off. I'm all for investigating something to see if it might be something your interested in, but with the web there's no reason to waste someones time investigating ideas. On the customer side Its hard to get any business to give you any sort of time unless your a big spender. :/ I don't look for special treatment. I'm one of those people who will just google something in a store if I need help instead of asking for help. Unless I really need help I'm not going to bother an employee with it. If its an hourly job I don't expect real help. Its just above their pay grade to care. Whether or not they call someone back or have good customer service to bring in more business, so they can be over worked for a slaves wadge, just doesn't matter to most low end employees. Unless there's an incentive to work hard people just don't. Greg gets mad at this when we go...well really everywhere. Rude employees or unknowledgable employees piss him off and hes always gotta say something. I just move on to the next thing and get on with my life. Those people arnt worth the wasted energy and you never know whats going on with them. That cashier who's being a bit quiet might be worried because they work 40 hours a week and they still cant pay their rent or buy diapers. The server who seems distracted and stressed might have had a whole day of being understaffed or having to deal with an incompetent kitchen staff. Everyone's got shit going on in their life at least try to give them the benefit of the doubt. If you frequent a place and your always patient and kind it not only rubs off people remember that shit when you go back in. If its a service and the business/employee has been rude to me I just wont tip and if the employee is dumb enough to make a comment about it I give them some very straight forward customer feedback, but unless its a confrontation I just let it go. ==================== An example of a way to fix this is: Oreillys offers a percentage compensation to sales people when they make sales on top of their hourly. This keeps the employees attentive because that sale matters to them. Its not just another chunk of change that the owner is going to see while the hourly gets the same irregardless to how hard they work. Ive noticed that when I go to Oreillys (really any of them) I almost always get really good service. The only times I've had bad service is with younger people who just don't know how good they have it at a job that actually rewards you for good work. They never last very long. People talk a lot about just raising the minimum wadge, but I dont think this will do enough. Yes a mild increase to make it so someone can actually live would be good. $8 an hour just doesn't go very far especially if you have kids, but incentive programs should be there to reward the people who actually care and do a good job. Otherwise you end up with a boom of younger people who give up on a career or never start a real career because its easier to just work an hourly job. Those should be there to start off with and gain experience, not to toil an entire lifetime away at. If I tell you that you have to to do a bunch of shit that you dont want to do and no matter how well you do it I'm only going to pay you $8 most people wont do shit. They are gonna do just enough to keep from being fired. Now what if I say you have do to a bunch of shit for $8, but if you do a great job and have excellent performance I'll give you a bonus on your paycheck. (example Kroger has surveys where employees get a bonus for each good review) Your probably going to work harder because not only do you get that bonus, but you also feel like your doing a good job, which I think people don't appreciate enough until they find a job where they actually excel and get good feedback. -==-- This whole mess is very frustrating for everyone. People get frustrated so they do a shit job and treat others worse and it just escalates. A lot of it comes from how bad the economy was/is. Everyone got into survival mode and that meant cutting as many corners and stretching money as far as it could possibly go for the short hand when the initial economy crash happened. Now we cant break the cycle because we are all still in survival mode. The small true American business cant succeed because everyone is trying to save money so where does that money go? China via big box stores and online shopping. Small businesses disappear and so does the money that we just pour over to China. Once the money is gone it doesn't come back and we are left in even worse shape. Then everyone gets jobs at the big box stores to scrape by to try to survive slowly getting in more and more debt while the money they make goes right back into trying to get by shopping at the cheaper big box stores. So essentially working to keep themselves poor. Frustration builds and the cycle goes back around again and again. Edited by DesmondGhostRider, Nov 17 2015, 03:31 PM.
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| cwatkin | Nov 17 2015, 06:41 PM Post #11 |
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I agree with a lot of this. You get customers who want everything done cheap and then complain. Basically I have priced myself out of that market for a reason. You do something cheap and tell them it might last a day or a year. When it breaks two weeks later they are pissed as hell and want it fixed correctly for free. No thanks in dealing with these "yard sale" shoppers. The customers that begin adding onto the job after it started are another good one. Again, you have to charge by the hour and not the job, otherwise you lose big on these. I make no bones about telling them that that wasn't part of this job when they bring something else up and that I can either do it at the same time as an additional job (if I have time) or can return another day to do that one. Yes, the people wanting it done for nothing are always an issue. I just told another one today that I couldn't speculate and would have to see the computer before giving him a quote. I reminded him that estimates are $35 figure out the problem and he bolted. He said it was just a cheap laptop and he wasn't spending that much on it. I am very upfront with people and let them know they aren't going to be paying yard sale prices. Many are perfectly happy to pay but many are not. These are the people who will drive 70 miles farther for a cheaper part and you know this costs more in the long run. Conor |
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| Stubby79 | Nov 18 2015, 11:32 AM Post #12 |
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I'm not interested in doing work either. Sign me up! |
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| DesmondGhostRider | Nov 18 2015, 07:56 PM Post #13 |
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charging hourly works for a lot of stuff and repairs, but for things we are going to build and try to sell or projects for people we cant really charge by the hour for that, just build it into the the total cost |
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| cwatkin | Nov 24 2015, 12:42 PM Post #14 |
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Yes, I have noted this too. Onsite work is always billed by the hour while I am willing to do some "canned" prices if I can do the work in the comfort of my own home. I used to offer fixed prices on some onsite jobs. Things like people having slow satellite internet when I didn't figure that into the bid and needed fast internet service for the job or problems way worse than I assumed caused me to no longer do this. Another problem I have run into are those who like to add tasks to the job while you are onsite. This is fine with me as long as you are willing to pay extra for those jobs. So many people think once you are onsite there will be no extra cost for doing extra work. Charging by the hour has eliminated that problem but it used to be a major time and money sucker. Conor |
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| truckjohn | Nov 25 2015, 11:04 AM Post #15 |
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In general - I want the best, most reliable guys I can get, never the cheapest... Let everybody else fool with the joker who just showed up in town and underbids jobs simply to never finish them.... When I am looking for contractors - I look all over the place to get as many recommendations as possible.... Then - my experience is that if I don't physically get them on the phone or speak to them personally - leaving a message/text/whatnot does no good.... The reason is that there are SO many tire kickers out there.... Because of this - they don't spend a lot of time on people who don't really make a point to get them for actual work..... 9 of 10 people simply leaving one single text or a message won't ever follow through with real work.... And remember - if these guys aren't working - they don't eat... Nobody pays them for time off/no work days.... and so they very quickly have to learn to weed out the potential customers who are wishy washy or don't have their act together (or have no money to pay)..... Now.. Onto the other point... I have noticed that a lot of contractors are REALLY BAD about not starting, working, and finishing stuff.... I think what happens is that they want a backlog/pipeline full of jobs - so they start, move on, then eventually roll back around and finish - because they are taking in a lot of jobs to keep the pipeline full.... I think many are worried that if they simply have a "Schedule/wait list" and they then roll back around and do the job start to finish say 1 month from now - a lot of customers loose patience and move on to another contractor who can start the job "tomorrow" (and never finish it)... I also know many who try to do this so that they have "Rainy day" indoor work to back up the sunny day "Outdoor work"... The last thing is to remember that we really aren't that far past "The Great Recession"... Many GOOD and reputable contractors ended up out of business... Many young guys didn't get into the business because business was so bad and there were no jobs.... Business only really started picking up about 2 years ago - and so there's a shortage of good, experienced contractors.... We literally lost 8 years now between end of 2007 and today - that's "Half a generation" when it comes to contractors and businesses.... It takes time to build the experience of both the craftsmanship and the skill running a business.... Thanks |
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