Case study - How "a garage door repair job went bad... What have been learned from it

Brief background

  1. The garage door came with the original house (built in Year 2002?). 
  2. Was being hit once by a drunk old handy-man, not in best shape. 
  3. The tenant’s father did fix a few months ago 
  4. The lady (tenant) called in May 2020, was not working again 
  5. Quick note: the lady has habits of over-exaggerating/being dramatic

The time consequences and key notes

  1. Issued the work order to Mark door works on May 14. 
  2. Received note from Mark back on May 15. (see scree-shot) below. 
    1. (LL01 – Need to read carefully understand clearly, which I did not. In the note, Mark clearly said two parts – One is for the opener, to get it fixed, it will cost $170; the 2nd part is the buckled door, he then try to push up-sale with a new door instead)
    2. LL02 – Get right to the point instead of making long statement. Just say – Yes, for repair of the door opener. No for the new door)
  3. Without realizing that a portion of the job has been done, the following was communicated 
    1. By this time, it became obvious to me that instead of getting this fixed, Mark was trying to push to squeeze more money out of this job. (firstly, try to up-sell a brand new door, then pushing a brand new opener). In addition, he was getting more and more pushy. 
    2. Instead of stick to Mark as a sole contractor, I started to shopping around, and found out the whole garage door market was being occupied by so called $29.00/visit company or small players with no names on google. 
  4. The second day, Mark sent a note on the words. 
    1. Without read Mark’s note properly, I went on assuming he were going to force the job by next Tuesday (which what he was saying is to tell me part of the work has been done)
    2.  
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