Many years ago we were have trouble with a large shop door. These doors and lifts are about 15-20 years old at the time, constantly having problems. One of the best garage door companies in Nashville is working on it and my boss (shop owner) comes out and starts giving the repairman a hard time and he says something to the effect of of 'if you can't fix it don't bother coming back'. I remember it like it was yesterday, the repairman looks down from his ladder and says "I've been ran off by better people than you".

That makes a whole lot of sense.

We had AC installation estimate done, found out we needed a new main panel.

Called electrician and he gave us an estimate and also to bury the main line underground. Also upgraded us to 200amp service.

Had a plumber come out and give estimate and schedule to replace our well pump and tank.

Electrician:
- took 2 weeks
- had to wait for power company
- bad storms delayed some work
- professional and did excellent work

HVAC:
- spent 1 day taking out old crap
- spent 1/2 of next day installing boxed coil inside and unit outside
- waited 2 days for electrician to swing back around to do final hookup (prepaid for this)
- professional and excellent work all around

Plumber:
- absolute fuckwit
- ruined half the pump cuz he didnt know what he was doing
- forgot it was set for 110 and I had to switch it to 220 (I even told him!!)
- installed a 14gal tank when I insisted he install a 20gal
- late to the job
- late returning calls after 2 weeks
- sloppy PEX work

HVAC returned after a month to proactively replace a cap that was recalled. Told them about the plumber as they stared at the "workmanship" with curious looks.
- "looks like Randy did the install, alright"

Electrician came by to double check that the meter was reading correctly
- "who did the plumbing?"
- "was his name Randy by chance?"
- "lord ... Here is a guy who will straighten this out for you"

I decided to rip out all of his shit, replaced all his PEX, swapped the tank out for a 20gal, and then ripped him a new one on yelp and google.

I gave positive feedback on bothe the HVAC and electrical guys.

Covid sucked. 1/3 of work done during covid was a financial waste. And we waited MONTHS to get on a list to have it all done in time.

Being "union" means zilch to me... Unions DO NOT police their own.

Go back.
Talk to him with your butt cheeks like Ace Ventura.  

Get a rimjob from his wife.

Yeah good walkout OP.
I have been blessed with many good and even some great costumers, but occasionally you meet some real winners. After being in the trades long enough, you get a 6th sense about them.
One that comes to mind had us install some circuits and controls for his pool equipment. Seemed a little demanding and abrasive, but we finished the job and he paid the bill.
Fast forward to a year later. Me and one of my guys are leaving a restaurant after eating lunch. As we are walking to the truck, a car comes flying up beside us and Mr douchbag starts yelling at me out the window. First words out of his mouth are "Hey you". Tells me what a shitty job we did and that the equipment we installed has never worked right and needs to be fixed. (It was working fine when we tested it at install.)
I ask him why he hasn't called me about this sooner, which only causes him to start cursing at me. I told him we would get a service call scheduled to try to resolve the issue, but it would take a couple of days to get to it, since we were busy.
He keeps up his tirade non stop this whole time about our terrible workmanship, lack of customer service, etc., till I finally just walked away. His parting yell as we climbed into our truck was "you are disrespecting me".
Next day he calls me yelling and cussing again. After some time trying to reason with him, I finally told him, "I'm sending you a full refund for the work we did, and I am blocking your number and I never want to hear from you again" I sent the refund check, he cashed it, and I haven't seen or heard from him since.
Good riddance.

Had one when I worked at Orkin. New customer on my route. Original start on the property was done by a saleman. The route managers/techs are supposed to get notes on what the problems are, where the problems are and things like "where the house key is left" if its a place we can do when no one is home. Well this house's service ticket had a "Key hidden" note and a notice about carpenter ants and that was it. I didnt get anything from the salesguy on what the hell was going on. I happened gto catch the lady as she was leaving. Just asked "which side of the house has the ants?" and she went ballistic. After 10 min of screaming she left. After she left and drove off, I walked out and went to my next stop. Got back to the office and handed the service ticket to the service mgr and told him I will not be going to this house ever again. I slightly went off in the office about how us techs get screwed over all the time by the sales mgrs playing these games and I will not take any more abuse from customers because of the sales guys incompetence. I dont think the service mgr ever had anyone say that to him. Guessing that was my 1st strike there.

As for those clowns who complain about "uneducated" people, the ones I've ran into that do that usually the ones who only make $60-75K/yr. Pretty funny to tell them how many "uneducated" people are making $120K+ doing thinks like trades.

The degradation of societal cohesion is happening. Expect various different abnormal behavior when people can't process their decline in standard of living. Beeing in an industrial en environment I see a lot of wierd behaviour induced by home related issues, of various type, a lot nore than 20 years ago, t's a slow process that man cannot see easily because it takes decades. Some can notice when major chage happens, like health policies and war, etc.

Charge triple, and walk away if they don't bite.

Fools and their money should be parted.

LOL. Sounds like you have it under control Sir. Have a nice day.

I once heard that poor and rich people act the same. After reading some of these I tend to agree

This.

Was she hot?

Real estate appraiser here.  I have walked out many a time.

People are cunty.

When they find out you actually make a reasonable living they act like youve been ripping them off.

I don't do major electrical (or even major plumbing jobs either) jobs. Any tradesman I've had work on my home, hell, I'm offering them a beverage even a beer (after the job), ask if there's anything I can help with or just get the hell out of the way...

The last thing I want to do is piss off a local tradesman who, I've found, will go out of their way for good customers if treated well.  

After we replaced our AC units, we had one of them short out. I couldn't trouble shoot it well enough and had to call a tech.  It was fire ants getting into the circuit board; evidently a common thing in GA. Tech walked me through how to check if it happened again, best place to purchase a replacement circuit card...but easier to prevent it by doing a little extra fire ant treatment around the units. Dude could have just taken the money and waited for me to call again. I offered him a home brew to take with him

Sorry OP, but you did exactly the right thing. Morons like that need to struggle and pay out the ass for bad service...that's what they deserve.

ROCK6

I worked at an auto repair/parts store (western auto). They moved me to the repair shop.

The head manager told me I would love it because you get to tell customers to fuck off.

I never did but the mechanics did and other managers did.

The thing was the mechanics were good and we had too many customers.

Every once in a while there would be a guy who had a bad day and his car broke down too. I ask him to please let the guys do their job and let me communicate with them. Some did some didn’t.

Typically we have to fire to a few customers a year.

Society in general has played a large part in that, it’ll likely only get way worse. A byproduct of “get a degree, any degree” “working a trade or with your hands is beneath my kid”. Short of some retired military, or 2nd career types, there isn’t much new blood going into construction. It really leaves two main types, those that have been doing it for decades, tons of knowledge and experience, they’re generally on the mid to higher end of cost spectrum. The other is the one GD is familiar with. Cheap shitbags, felons, people needing to work off the books, illegals, generally little knowledge or care about what they do.

Hahahahahaha……

And help her spend the alimony.

Attached File

I have a very long and detailed initial phone interview with prospective clients before I'll even set foot on a potential project and quite a few don't make the cut.  Contractor spidey sense is real.

As a commercial GC I wouldn't be able to do anything without my trade partners so we try to take care of them.  I had a new concrete crew out a job.  Bunch of thin grey haired black guys and you could just tell looking at them they had done this all their life and they were damn good.
At the end of the day before I left i walked up to each one of them, looked them in they eye, thanked them for coming out and how nice it was watching true pros at their craft and shook their hand.  Based upon the looks I got I don't think this had ever happened.  
Especially from an grey haired white guy.

This was my strategy for douchebag customers as a salesman. You want to show your ass and I have something you need, pay me. Maybe I'm going to sell you on something inferior, but has a huge spiff or much higher margin.

A few more of my contractor stories.

Hired a one man band electrician to wire my hot tub. Told him we needed to follow the existing conduit and we could drop down into the same 12X12 outdoor box.  I assumed this was the junction box leading to my dock lift.  Guy drives 100 miles round trip to buy conduit and wire.  Comes to do the job.  We open the box and the wiring was already run by the previous owner since was going to put a hot tub in the same place.  
Guy started grumbling about having to spend time returning materials….I stopped him right there and told him this fuck up was on me.  Add in your travel time for both trips, you’re not eating this!  
I paid him $600 for a pigtail from the box into the hot tub and his time and thanked him.  No warranty bs if something went wrong because “homeowner wired in electrical”.

Wife wanted the family room painted and a 14’ pipe mounted on a high wall to hang pics from.  Called a friend that uses a Mexican crew in his rentals.   Guy shows up for a quote.  Walks in, looks around and said he’ll get back in touch with my wife.  Room is about 25’ X 30’ with a 19’ high peak cathedral ceiling.  Couple weeks go by and he quotes $2400 including paint.  
We got another guy that was a one man crew that drags his teenage son in to help move furniture and ladder work. He quoted $850 and we buy the paint because he’s been burned in the past with the housewife not liking the color she selected.
One problem with this guy though, he wouldn’t shut up long enough to tell him everything you wanted done. He was a talker, not a listener.  When we got to the hanging the pipe part he was lost. “And I agreed to this?” I had it planned out and it was going to be easy to do if he would have just shut the fuck up and listened to me.  He was trying to over complicate it.
Needless to say, painting was done and he would come back Saturday to do the pipe.  Saturday he had truck problems. We never heard back from him so we pulled our ladder out yesterday, stacked bricks on the stairs, laid out the platform and the wife went up the ladder. We got it done.