No wonder small businesses are suffering
June 11th, 2009 by GregI cut down a large conifer last week and now need the root ground.
Last week I contacted a ‘Tree surgen‘ and he quoted me over the phone and said he was be able to do it Monday or Tuesday, he said he would confirm over the weekend. The weekend came and went, Monday came and went, Monday afternoon I emailed them to confirm when they will do the work. No response. It’s now Thursday and they still have not bothered getting back to me.
Yesterday I called another tree surgen, he came out later to look at what is needed and gave me a quote, he said he is grinding stumps today and can do the job about 13:00. By 15:30 he had not arrived so I telephoned him, a lady whom I assume is his wife said that the grinder had broken down and he had gone out to get replacement parts. I accept this happens, what I don’t accept is the fact that he could not phone me and let me know he would not be able to do the job today. I’ve sat all afternoon waiting for him to arrive when I could have been out doing other things.
I phoned another company this morning, they were tied up and he said he would phone me back within half an hour, guess what, 6 hours later still no call back.
Businesses off all sizes but especially small businesses are struggling in the current climate, is it no wonder if this is how they treat customers.
I do have a 3rd ‘Tree Surgen’ coming out tomorow morning, I do hope they take their business more seriously.
Posted in General | 8 Comments »
Yes small businesses really need to go the extra mile, to keep their existing customers and keep their businesses afloat. I find it hard to believe that both of the tree surgeons who said they would come, didn’t! Good luck with the next one.
Jan,
The 2nd tree surgeon did call back last night and apologised, he said he will be here this morning, let’s hope he does turn up. The third tree surgeon who said he would call round between 8:30 and 9:00 this morning did turn up at 7:30 and gave me a quote twice as high as anyone else.
i had that same thing happen to me with a plumber. the bad thing about it was that there were only a few in the little town i was living in and none of them showed up. no call, nothing. piss me off. i ended up finding a handyman that came and solved my problem.
You do tend to get service just as bad from large companies, but for some reason we expect it more from them. “They’re busy” or, “They have 2000 employees” seems to let them get away with it more than a one person business. It is true that if you have your own business and you are small, you need to be ten times more vigilant with client service than the larger companies. It is just unfortunate that the smaller businesses, when run properly, in general give far better service and quality than the big guys. Let’s hope there are still some little guys out there after this economic crap has settled
Meghann
You are so correct, but I try to use small businesses for that reason, as I expect better service. On the other hand, the second Tree Surgeon did turn up yesterday and done a good job, the first tree surgeon phoned me last night and offered to come straight out, he didn’t give a reason or apology though.
I always think that to have a successful home services business you just need to return phone calls and show up. I refuse to make more than one phone call to these businesses, since I have no desire to beg them to take my money. Of course from time to time that means doing the job ourselves if no one calls back.
Glad to see you now have your non-smoking self on your location map! Good reinforcement.
I hope you managed to get the situation taken care of it. It’s frustrating when companies don’t take our time seriously.