fixing a problem?

[hl_tree]

Last Tuesday I had a long day. The morning was a lot of running around to make sure a job was being taken care of properly, and also doing some estimates. After lunch I did 2 small pruning jobs which collectively took me until about 5:30. I was about to take off for dinner, when I checked my phone and saw that another customer had called about "a broken branch that needs to be taken care of by the 4th" so I head over there with the skies getting cloudier by the minute. I talked with the customer and decided to do it then and there... By about 7:00 (thanks to getting the throw ball stuck) I had the branch on the ground and was packing up again due to an approaching lightning / rain storm. When I got back up to my truck, a neighbor came over to talk about a dead branch in a hickory tree over his roof. I took a VERY quick look and said I'd be in touch. So I headed to the bar for dinner (another client owns the bar) and by the time I got out (about 7:45 / 8:00) it had stopped raining. I went back over to my client's place and cleaned up the broken branch and picked up the check. By this time it was about 8:15 / 8:30. I went to the neighbor after this and we spoke about the branch over his house. I gave a reasonable price, and we wound up BS'ing until 9:30 in the road in front of his house. I seem to recall telling him that I would try to get there the following day (short day) and if not I would call him on Monday to set something up for the following week. Well the following day wound up being MUGGY as a son of a b**** so I did some BS work at 2 places in the morning and called it a day. Today I drive by the guy's house and see that he is home, so rather than call I just stopped in to say I'd try to get there Tuesday or Wednesday...

The guy came outside and was MAD, said I am unreliable, and that it's just not going to work.

Now while I got a bit of a wierd feeling about this guy in the beginning, and I don't really care about working for him... what I do care about is being reliable, and my reputation for being so. I certainly don't want it getting around that I am unreliable, because that's 1 of the things I pride myself on. So my question is this, how can I make this right?

I mean we were BS'ing for WELL over an hour after dark, almost a week prior, so what I did and didn't say is beyond my recollection. 2 of the guy's neighbors are customers of mine, and they would DEFINATELY say that I am reliable.

 

[Paul Biester]

Remember!!some people are unreasonable and most folks who nknow them,probably are aware of that fact!!!

 

[NeTree]

Spending an hour BS-ing was your first mistake. Not having something in writing was your second.

Arrive, quote, leave. If they want to spend an hour on your "free estimate" bs-ing about trees, it's a consultation.

Get a signed written proposal for everything. Insurance companies require it anyways, and it's one more thing that separates the hacks from the pros.

Really, if you had the hour after looking at it to BS in his driveway, couldn't you have just done it then?