Advice needed

[treedom]

Tough one. It sounds like you are in the clear job wise, but its difficult if she's gonna bad mouth you to others. Do you think you could schmooze her on tuesday? If there is a chance of happy resolution (@ least from her perception ) without too much from you, its worth a try. Good luck.

 

Its hard, mist of the time the client always has to be right, even though they aint!

 

sent from my Defy so apologies for poor spelling and grammar

[MAPLE LEAF]

will offer to clear weeds and scratch test privet i know none will be dead will show her green wood only take half hour then thats it will also have written letter in van explaining what ive done as goodwill gesture then she can pick the bones out of that.

will tryto get good outcome but if it did go further at least she cant say i did nothing to resolve situation even after this length of time.

Edited February 23, 2012 by MAPLE LEAF

[Jesse]

2 years ago i put in a privet hedge for a regular client of mine who recently rang me up to say she was not happy with it i went and had a look and all the base leaves were dropping off and the area was covered in weeds.

I told my client that the leaves dropped due to lack of water and the weeds at the base of the hedge had to be cleared.

I also did a scratch test at the base of the privet to check for green wood which there was to make sure they were alive.only today she rang me up saying shes not happy and wants to claim on my insurance for a new hedge.

I told her i would as a goodwill gesture i would come round and clear the weeds and do a scratch test on all the shrubs and replace free of charge any privet that had died to be told no not good enough.now i dont want to tell her to poke it as this would be unproffesional and she knows alot of my other clients and she would make it known to them what had happened.

I know the work was done 2 years ago but i dont need her bringing my name down as would be bad for business.

Its not got Armillaria has it?

[MAPLE LEAF]

which symptons are sorry not heared of that one and how would you know for sure.

[swinny]

Thing is though to bear in mind is if she does it once she may try it again and others may also try

 

catch 22 here

[MAPLE LEAF]

at the end of the day if i have to walk away at least i can hold my head high without any worrys as i dont advertise hardly 98% of all my work is word and mouth i feel i can give the client half an hour i know catch 22 but i always think of my business first even if the client is wrong.

[daveindales]

Get her on to arbtalk and show her this thread. Almost everyone agrees that she is just trying it on. Otherwise, she is probably just one of a very small percentage of people who would not be happy if you totally re-planted her hedge, landscaped her garden, bought her a birthday present every year for the rest of her life; and told her she was the most gorgeous woman in town.

 

To be honest though, tell her you did a good professional job and that you will do no more work on the hedge, unless it is for payment. If you do anymore work for her, make sure everything is in writing.

[gensetsteve]

If you replant the hedge she will come back again. If you refund the money she will want compensation. Some you just cannot win. As you get older you get better at weeding these people out at the quoting stage.

[MATTMOSS]

Ring her back and tell her there is no need for me to revisit you on tue as my job was completed 2 years ago and you are not prepared to do any more about it or give a refund .

 

 

Tell her to take a running jump!!

 

You have really got toughen up! There are some real A holes in this world who will try to have you over for anything, you can do without unreasonable customers like this.

 

good luck man up

[Jesse]

which symptons are sorry not heared of that one and how would you know for sure.

 

Honey fungus, any old stumps in the garden, dead shrubs or trees? what does the soil smell like? you could suggest you look at the site in the autumn, Honey fungus thrives on Privet, bare root stock planted in a site with Honey fungus two years ago would prob be on its way out now, worth looking into.