Dealing with the public.
 

We had a guy call about a month ago about having something powder coated, after he described it to me the best he could I told him it would be $250 to sandblast and coat it. After i gave him the price he then tells me he has two of them and I said if we did both at the same time I could do it for $200 each, he was happy with the price and said he'd be in touch, about 10 minutes later he calls back to verify the price I had just given. Two weeks later he dropped off the items and I had to order in the powder since I didn't have enough of the color he wanted, not a big deal because he wasn't in a big hurry. Last Wednesday the powder arrived so Thursday I blasted and coated both pieces. Today he came to pick them up and wrote out the check for $250 and as soon as I saw it I knew I was in for an argument. I told him the price was $400 which set him off and we went back and forth for a few minutes but he ultimately paid the $400 and left but I doubt we'll be seeing him again. The same thing happens to people who come for rust repair on their car, if we tell them $800-$1000 all they heard was $800 and when the final bill is $900 or $950 it turns into a big argument, I swear everybody that comes here has selective hearing. I'm about tired of dealing with the public and all the B.S that goes with it.

I hear Ya. I love retirement. My days of dealing with customers, Government and employees are done. :beerchug:

I hate dealing with people, especially those types of people... :beerchug:

We had another customer that had his tractor hauled in because the bendix fell off the starter and was laying in the bell housing, this happened while the tractor was running so it damaged some teeth on the flywheel. The shop rate is $65 an hour plus parts and by the time we were done he had about $500 in it, he got all pissed because he thought the bill should have only been $100 and didn't want to pay for the flywheel gear because he didn't think a few missing teeth was a big deal, he also wasn't happy that we put a new bendix on, he thought we should have just reused the old one that fell off. After that he ran around town saying he owned stock in our business because he spent so much money here and some other B.S. A couple months later he needed his tractor worked on again but we told we weren't interested.

Yay Capitalism... :biggrin2:

My ex and I had a small tractor dealership back in the 90s. We got so sick of customers, employees and like Sam Mac said the govt that we sold it. Never regretted selling it! People would buy cheap chit from the box stores and wanted service yesterday. Someone spends $5000 on a garden tractor from my shop and it needs servicing...guess what they come before mr cheapazz. I hear ya Tim!

I remember when I worked for the Deere dealership... farmers would spend $25000 on service and repair for their self propelled forage harvester...no problem. However, if a customer had to spend $300-$400 on their 455 garden tractor you would think we asked them for their first born. Complain and whine but they paid the bill and came back next season.

I thought this was that...

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People will never change. :Choke: Computers suck too. :BangPC:

Tim, would a company policy of written estimates signed by both parties be useful? Maybe that would help the people that only hear what they want to hear. :Unknown:

I don’t deal with the general public. Most of what I make is for conveyors or packaging systems. Most of the time they just need it and don’t care what it costs. Getting big companies to pay their bills is a sore subject for me. They think I’m a bank evidently.