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Story of a PIA

2K views 26 replies 16 participants last post by  glen1971 
#1 ·
Have a customer for 20 years always a cheap skate but renewed his contract and was regular income.

5 years ago his radiator was leaking, we gave him a price to replace and he decided to do it on his own to save money.

Last weekend 2:30 AM I am in Yellowstone and the phone rings, it is him with an emergency, block heater melted and he needs help. I dispatch our tech he resolves the problem but notices the radiator is leaking. He request pricing for the block heater and radiator.

WE give him a quote and he calls back telling us last time he did it is three hours and he can buy the radiator much cheaper than what we have quoted. Our question is how did that work out last time and OK go for it.

Then he tells us he'll buy the radiator but we have to pick it up. No way, we do not want that liability.

Finally he says he'll get the radiator and we do all labor by this time we are in a place to tell him no thanks.

Requoted the job with labor, lost time and profit on a radiator he is supplying he either signs it or not.

In the meantime he has been without a generator for 9 days come Monday.

But the thing I never figured out is how to heck do people not realize that we are in business to make money and there is no logic in selling material at cost.
 
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#2 ·
But the thing I never figured out is how to heck do people not realize that we are in business to make money and there is no logic in selling material at cost.
I think they realize that. We have to realize that customers are, for the most part, looking to spend as little as possible so they can keep more of their money. We all do the same thing most of the time, as a consumer of any product or service. It's a chess game.

As a business owner, we get to either choose to play the game, or let them play with someone else.

Is this person worth the aggravation?
 
#5 ·
I had one of those type of customers years ago. He needed a machine hook up and I gave him a price of $1,800.00 but I could not get there for a week. He told me he would make it $1,500.00 if I could do it right away. ??? No, it is $1,800.00 and a week. I did not do the job. I found out weeks later he was also negotiating with a friend of mine for the same work at the same time. My friend's price was $2,400.00 and the customer was offering him $1,800.00. Neither one of us got the job. The "in house" maintenance worker hooked it up with extension cords. It was 480 volts, three phase. White, Black, Green. Phase A,B,C.

Some people you simply cannot figure out.
 
#6 ·
Some of it may depend upon how badly he needs that generator and what is the cost or consequence to it not working or failing during an outage. Block heaters always end up being a messy job. Have to find some better hose pinch pliers. How badly is it leaking. I tire quickly of those negotiations. How much time have I wasted researching and looking for the parts, etc...?
 
#19 ·
Lots of the compressors and generators I've worked on have a system in place to keep the oil and glycol at a set temperature year round, whether the machine is running or not. Either it's an electric block heater, an in-line heater on the gylcol (ex. Kim Hot Start), or the case of 5 compressors in my area, they have a pneumatic switching system that changes to run the boiler glycol through the oil exchanger instead of the engine glycol when they aren't running. But we just came out of a week of -32C (-26F) for highs, so I'm guessing that is a driving force of the design.
 
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