Case study - How "a garage door repair job went bad... What have been learned from it
Brief background
- The garage door came with the original house (built in Year 2002?).
- Was being hit once by a drunk old handy-man, not in best shape.
- The tenant’s father did fix a few months ago
- The lady (tenant) called in May 2020, was not working again
- Quick note: the lady has habits of over-exaggerating/being dramatic
The time consequences and key notes
- Issued the work order to Mark door works on May 14.
- Received note from Mark back on May 15. (see scree-shot) below.
- (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)
- 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)
- Without realizing that a portion of the job has been done, the following was communicated
- 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.
- 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.
- The second day, Mark sent a note on the words.
- 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)