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What Unit? Big Client Nightmares

By Scott Rodgers

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 02Oct2009 Word count: 569 Viewed: 56 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Plumbers can love going out on return calls - after all, business that generates more business is doubly lucrative. But there's a limit to some of this love affair with big commercial jobs were multiple property management - there are some challenges involved that you want to watch out for.

So I get a call from a property manager, and he has about 100 units. That's great - I can use the work. It's a slow year, and it's about the time I'm starting to calculate second quarter estimated taxes. I'm ready to go to work.

I get in the truck and go down there - I fix a broken water heater in number 55. I put together the standard invoice, noting the unit number on the line items. I get paid.

Two months later, I'm back in the same job site. I fix a leak in number 57. I do the same deal with the invoice, but it doesn't get paid right away. It basically sits on the guy's desk. After a month, I make my standard calls, and the check comes out. While I'm cashing it, I get that first inkling that something may be very wrong. The check memo references #55.

The next month another again to do routine work on units 68 and 19. Luckily for me, I'm good at remembering numbers. I've got everything on the invoice as it should be. But then I get a call from this guy, this city slicker fast talking kind of annoying personality, and why do I feel like I'm getting huckstered when he asks me to go back to my file and figure out why he has two checks for the same job at number 55?

I explain it to him. He says okay. But here's the thing - over the course of three return jobs near the end of the year, I'm out to 55 again, this time to reinstall a new washing machine.

Now, this guy is hanging around the unit when I get there. And once again, he wants me to check the backlog to see just what the story was on 55. Here's where I get a little ticked. I don't carry the paperwork with me, it's all back at the office.

The week after this I call the guy and explain it once again. But now he's getting all confused over number 19 and number 91. And this time, as I look at it, I can't quite tell if it might be my fault. I may have inverted the numbers, but I doubt it. It's more likely to me that I'm getting taken in by somebody who understands the value of having a large property.

You see, there are nearly endless ways to hassle a contractor into dropping service calls for a long annual sheet. You just hammer away at them with inquiries until they "settle" - writing off a couple of possibly erroneous service calls in exchange for a total payment and no more questions.

This is about the most unethical way to do business that I ever heard of, but it happens, and that's why having a lot of return business on a large property can be a blessing and a curse. Do you still get a lot of money? Yes. But just like a friend of mine once said, there is no free lunch, and everything is a trade-off. And that's what I learned from this big client experience.

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