[Trevor Knight]

However, and I stand to be corrected on this, if you want to pursue a matter like this in a small claims court don't accept any payment from them in any way otherwise you will be seen as having accepted their offer and closed the contract. This won't help your claim and may even prevent you from being successful.

Mark

Correct! Make sure you have recitifed ALL their complaints, get a signed worksheet to say they are satisfied and then if no payment proceed to court action. If they won't sign your worksheet make sure you detail all your communication and times you spoke etc... This way when you do go to court you will appear far more organised and professional and a judge will take you far more seriously when you state times and dates etc... than the customer who has no record whatsoever!

Judgment in favour of the ...................................Plaintiff!!!!

[jeff1]

This may sound a bit daft, but I take photo's of all my gutter cleaning Jobs, you know the sort Before and after ones, this is for my own benefit, but reading this topic, I think I will only delete photo's from my camera now, when the cutomer has paid.
They may help in a court to show the type of work you actually did.

[Trevor Knight]

good idea, we should all think of that!

[Davie T]

I can't understand why you went to the customer's house after 9.00pm.
In my opinion that was a mistake!
You should have made arrangements to visit them at a suitable mutual time next day and discussed the issue then. The customer would have probably calmed down by then and you would have had time to analyse how you were going to approach the situation.
For me 9.00pm is my time, not theirs.

[M & C Window Cleaning]

This may sound a bit daft, but I take photo's of all my gutter cleaning Jobs, you know the sort Before and after ones,

I don't think taking before and after photos sounds daft at all. It's an excellent idea. I haven't done that many gutter/soffit/fascia jobs but I think I'll be adopting that idea in the future. Just in case.

[KarlJones]

I can't understand why you went to the customer's house after 9.00pm.
In my opinion that was a mistake!
You should have made arrangements to visit them at a suitable mutual time next day and discussed the issue then. The customer would have probably calmed down by then and you would have had time to analyse how you were going to approach the situation.
For me 9.00pm is my time, not theirs.

Excellent advice. 
The reason was because it was my only night off from looking after my son, so I thought I would get it done and it was still light. 

But your totally correct, hindsight tells me that you should not rush round.

[Clive McDonald]

About photo's before and after (of gutters by Jeff)
I've been blamed for all sorts of things so photo's might be a good routine to get into.
I've been looking at drive washing and i've been told the custys blame you for it not being level afterwards, so again photos might help.

[Helen]

Take a sprirt level with your camera for before and after

[Clive McDonald]

No Helen, you pronounce it whacker.

[Ian Lancaster]

When people ask me what I like most about window cleaning, somewhere near the top of my list is "totally stress free."

Over my (many) years, I've had surprisingly few situations like this, and each time I've taken the "line of least resistance" i.e. walked away.

Lie is too short to waste chunks of it persuing revenge against the people who are, probably, professional complainers.  You may eventually get the boost of seeing them having to toe the line, but the cost to you in stress, worry, blood pressure etc isn't worth it. (Unless we're talking 100's of pounds here)

I had one who asked me to clean his soffits, fascias, guttering, frames and windows.  I did what he asked, and made a very good job of it :.  He had to go out, so he gave me a cheque for £40 (the agreed price)

Later that day my wife rang me to say he'd been on the phone saying he'd never seen such bad workmanship, the job was dreadful and he wanted me back there immediately.

After I'd finished for the day I went back to se what the problem was.  Now his story was that he'd asked me to wash down all his white paintwork and his double garage doors.

Totally untrue.  He knew it, and so did I.

I didn't waste more time on him - I tore his cheque up and stuffed it in his top pocket.

I said:  "We both know what we agreed, so we both know you're just out to cheat me.  Let me save you any more lies, here's your cheque back, I haven't the time to waste on scum like you, I've got hundreds of good, satisfied customers to keep happy."

He didn't know what to say, and I didn't wait for him to get his breath back.

I still do the house next door, and if he's about when I arrive to do it he runs into his house and shuts the door.

We've just had another one:  A new job canvassed by Rounddevelopers and passed to our franchisee.  He did the job but the customer wasn't in so left a "windows cleaned" ticket.  Still not in when he went to collect so left a "sorry to miss you" ticket.

Second time round - job done again, still not in - "windows cleaned" ticket left with request for two payments.  Went to collect, they denied all knowledge, even though they'd had proper printed quotation.  Refused to pay.  Pointed out we knew the wife's name and mobile number, so how come if they'd never heard of us?

Still denied any knowledge, so I advised our man to forget it, and told him you will always meet the odd scumbag but it's not worth getting ulcers over it.

For every sh*t there's a thousand good ones

Cheers,

Ian

[Paul Coleman]

When people ask me what I like most about window cleaning, somewhere near the top of my list is "totally stress free."

Over my (many) years, I've had surprisingly few situations like this, and each time I've taken the "line of least resistance" i.e. walked away.

Lie is too short to waste chunks of it persuing revenge against the people who are, probably, professional complainers.  You may eventually get the boost of seeing them having to toe the line, but the cost to you in stress, worry, blood pressure etc isn't worth it. (Unless we're talking 100's of pounds here)

I had one who asked me to clean his soffits, fascias, guttering, frames and windows.  I did what he asked, and made a very good job of it :.  He had to go out, so he gave me a cheque for £40 (the agreed price)

Later that day my wife rang me to say he'd been on the phone saying he'd never seen such bad workmanship, the job was dreadful and he wanted me back there immediately.

After I'd finished for the day I went back to se what the problem was.  Now his story was that he'd asked me to wash down all his white paintwork and his double garage doors.

Totally untrue.  He knew it, and so did I.

I didn't waste more time on him - I tore his cheque up and stuffed it in his top pocket.

I said:  "We both know what we agreed, so we both know you're just out to cheat me.  Let me save you any more lies, here's your cheque back, I haven't the time to waste on scum like you, I've got hundreds of good, satisfied customers to keep happy."

He didn't know what to say, and I didn't wait for him to get his breath back.

I still do the house next door, and if he's about when I arrive to do it he runs into his house and shuts the door.

We've just had another one:  A new job canvassed by Rounddevelopers and passed to our franchisee.  He did the job but the customer wasn't in so left a "windows cleaned" ticket.  Still not in when he went to collect so left a "sorry to miss you" ticket.

Second time round - job done again, still not in - "windows cleaned" ticket left with request for two payments.  Went to collect, they denied all knowledge, even though they'd had proper printed quotation.  Refused to pay.  Pointed out we knew the wife's name and mobile number, so how come if they'd never heard of us?

Still denied any knowledge, so I advised our man to forget it, and told him you will always meet the odd scumbag but it's not worth getting ulcers over it.

For every sh*t there's a thousand good ones

Cheers,

Ian

Very good post Ian.
I've sometimes got stressed about such situations but unless it's for a very large amount, I walk away too.
I've seen stress do some awful things to people and I'm not immune either.  It's not worth giving the scumbags that much power.  I can resent them all I want to but they just muddle through their apologies for lives oblivious to my feelings.  If my resentment had some proportionate negative effect on them then maybe it would be worth experiencing - but it doesn't.  OK, so eggs on their windows and paint stripper on their cars are reasonable fantasies and making a jest about such things can help to ease the annoyance.  However, I'm not into lowering myself to their scumbag level.
I DO make sure that every window cleaner I know is warned about the address though.  There is some satisfaction in making it harder for them to turn someone else over.

[KarlJones]

See I thought of felt how Ian says he feels about the customer.  Just get out of there as by and by the window cleaning game for me means I have a lot less stress.  It is sort of like "these time wasters have wasted enough of my time".  I can deal with picky customers (am i busy or not)  but downright timewasters I just want to pull away from.

[Londoner]

The beauty of this business is that you are not likely to get knocked for anything really significant. I have a friend who is a plumber / heating engineer and he has been done over for thousands ( and more than once ). He's no mug either.

Another friend of mine did carpet cleaning back in the days when it was like having a licence to print money.
One day he gets a call to do a whole flat, carpets and upholstery in Finchley. When he gets there a lady lets him in, very nice and helpful. When he finished about six hours later he gave here the bill. She looked shocked, "I'm not paying, I am the new tenant. The landlord booked you, he phoned to say you were coming today"
She didn't know the landlords address but she gave him the name and address of the letting agency.
At the letting agency they knew nothing about it but the look that passed between the two staff members when he told them what had happened spoke volumes.

 This obviously wasn't the first time the landlord had pulled a stroke like this.

 The landlord was abroad they said and they would try to contact him. My friend  never did get paid, repeated calls to the letting agents were just stonewalled.

[Ian Lancaster]

We've just had another one:  A new job canvassed by Rounddevelopers and passed to our franchisee.  He did the job but the customer wasn't in so left a "windows cleaned" ticket.  Still not in when he went to collect so left a "sorry to miss you" ticket.

Second time round - job done again, still not in - "windows cleaned" ticket left with request for two payments.  Went to collect, they denied all knowledge, even though they'd had proper printed quotation.  Refused to pay.  Pointed out we knew the wife's name and mobile number, so how come if they'd never heard of us?

Still denied any knowledge, so I advised our man to forget it, and told him you will always meet the odd scumbag but it's not worth getting ulcers over it.

For every sh*t there's a thousand good ones

Cheers,

Ian

Had a result on this one

A couple of days ago the husband phoned our man:  "I owe you an apology, I'm very, very sorry.  My wife booked the job but she was afraid to tell me, so she hid the notes you left and hoped she would catch you when I wasn't here." : : :

He's going to post a cheque (he says) with a note saying whether they want us to continue or not.

We wait with baited breath

Cheers,

Ian

[Trevor Knight]

And when their payment arrives I would help them with their decision - your dumped!