I have a story from just yesterday that I thought I'd share. I'm not a no guy. People generally like me and find me personable and easy to get along with. As a new business, I feel that it's better for my business to take as many jobs as possible to build our reputation and generate positive cash flow than to pick and choose every job. But, as a business that has turned somewhat successful pretty quickly, I do find myself quoting higher prices for tougher jobs and not fretting when people walk away. So here's my story.
When we first started, one of my first calls was for an interior detail on a "new" car. I quoted what I thought was a fair price. When I got there, the guy's daughter (car owner) told me the car was involved in an accident and the passenger was eating soup. The window was down. There was soup on the front seat, under the seat, in the window track, in the backseat, etc. I had to take the seat out. I went about my work with a smile on my face. The guy came home in the middle of the job and I said "I wish you would have mentioned the soup when you called. I think I'm going to have to charge you a little more for this job." He was actually fine with that and even gave a nice tip. The daughter was very happy with the finished work.
About a week later, he calls me out to give him a quote on polishing a freshly painted truck and correcting the paint on a poor paint job on his wife's Kia's rear quarter panel. I gave him a very fair, probably low, quote on the two jobs combined. He scheduled an appointment for a week later. This required us to purchase another DA, more pads, more compound and polish, etc. I spent a couple hundred bucks to do this job. Money that I would have likely spent in the future, but money that we were barely making when we first started. We showed up to do the job. Neither vehicle was there and no answer at the door, no response to phone call or text. We sat outside for about 30 minutes and called it. I called again and left a polite message saying that he must have forgotten about making the appointment and to call me. No return call. The next evening, I happened to stop by a local pizza place to pick up an order to go. My son was waiting out in the work truck with the trailer attached in case it had to be moved. While I'm sitting there, the guy walks in with his wife and is standing next to me. I pretend not to see him. I think he spotted me and him and his wife abruptly left after putting their name in for a seat. I texted my son "guess who is standing next to me?" The next day, I receive a call from the guy explaining how the transmission went out in such and such a car and he didn't have the money to do the job. More likely explanation, this guy is a local contractor and I think he pretty much "trades" everything for work. He probably found somebody to do it in trade but decided to just blow me off instead of canceling.
This was like six months ago. Fast forward to yesterday. The guy calls me out of the blue. Hey, buddy, I want you to do that one job (the bigger one of the two). You quoted me $x for the two jobs, so I think the price should be 1/2 $x. The two jobs were probably more like 75/25, not 50/50. Then of course, his recollection of the quote for the work was wrong and low. I quoted him like $800 for the two, and of course he remembered that I quoted him "around $600." I told him "let me talk it over with my son and I'll see what works for us." My son said no way. That guy flaked on us, lied to us and is now trying to cheat us. He called back a couple hours later all friendly and I just flat out told him "we don't think it's a good fit for us. The price you're talking about seems lower that what we quoted and you no showed on us the last time without even calling when we booked out an entire day for your job." He just said "Oh, okay" and hung up. It actually felt great to tell him no but in a polite way.
