Customers Moaning

[Chris Sheppard]

This type of "bad" customer is the reason why I don’t bother with firewood any more.

 

There are plenty of log suppliers here and plenty of competition and I can do much better without the aggro

 

 

Did used to enjoy firewood but it looks to be a totally different game to what it used to be.

 

Much less hassle being out in the wood selling roadside for someone else to have the headache

[s.varty]

You can sell logs by weight, just as long as it is the correct weight, i.e your advertised 1 ton of logs is in fact 1 ton.

[skyhuck]

Skyhucks right, you can...unfortunately this would just mean running every load over a weighbridge to stay the right side of the weights and measures law...hardly worth the effort

 

Not necessarily, my farmer neighbour has a weigh scale on his front loader, so he could weigh each bucket load when loading.

 

Coal merchants simply weigh each sack as its loaded.

 

There's no idea way of buying fire wood, volume is easiest, but I'd much sooner have a cube of Beech, over a cube of birch.

[skyhuck]

 

Did used to enjoy firewood but it looks to be a totally different game to what it used to be.

 

Much less hassle being out in the wood selling roadside for someone else to have the headache

 

In the past you were selling to life long wood burners who knew the score, today there too many new to burning wood, with very little knowledge, but think they know it all.

[Marlin.45]

Not necessarily, my farmer neighbour has a weigh scale on his front loader, so he could weigh each bucket load when loading.

 

Coal merchants simply weigh each sack as its loaded.

 

There's no idea way of buying fire wood, volume is easiest, but I'd much sooner have a cube of Beech, over a cube of birch.

 

But is that to weight feed etc. for his own use? If dealing with the gen pub then the annual calibration would have to be to a std acceptable to weights and measures. For someone to come out and transport 1 tonne calibrated weights to check the thing would be the best part of £500-1k every year - probably

[JonnyVine]

In the past you were selling to life long wood burners who knew the score, today there too many new to burning wood, with very little knowledge, but think they know it all.

 

Seccond that Sky

And its going to get a lot worse too with the price of energy rising!

[skyhuck]

But is that to weight feed etc. for his own use? If dealing with the gen pub then the annual calibration would have to be to a std acceptable to weights and measures. For someone to come out and transport 1 tonne calibrated weights to check the thing would be the best part of £500-1k every year - probably

 

Would be very simple to have a known weight, check the scales with that and always add a few extra few logs to make sure your on the safe side of the weight.

[APC]

I'm selling green ash/birch at the moment. Felled last year but left in cord until month or 2 ago. I always tell the customer this when they call though. Haven't really had anyone moan for a while now. Still only driven away without tipping once, but was back to the same address within a fortnight with a load that the bloke was proper chuffed with and I was glad for the custom.

[Bowlander]

There's no idea way of buying fire wood, volume is easiest, but I'd much sooner have a cube of Beech, over a cube of birch.

 

Skyhuck has made some good points. I would prefer it if suppliers would sell firewood either by weights or volume as generally, people have no idea how big the bags are (or how full they are) until it arrives on the back of a truck. In most cases people will feel its too late to decline and just accept the load.

 

A gentleman remarked earlier in the thread that wood isnt sold by weight because an oak log weighs twice as much as softwood logs. Isnt this why hardwood is more expensive than softwood? Because it burns hotter for longer?

 

I'd much rather have firewood logs but i often get "eco-logs" as at least they are a standardised product and prices like-for-like can be compared across suppliers.

[ThrustSSC]

In the past you were selling to life long wood burners who knew the score, today there too many new to burning wood, with very little knowledge, but think they know it all.

 

I'm going to stand up a little bit for the customers here - skyhuck is right in the first half of his post, but my experience of customers with new stoves and no legacy of learning from Granny/Grandpa/Mum/Dad is that they want to learn, want to understand how to tell good wood from bad, want to understand the difference between softwood and hardwood.

 

Yes, there are a few who tell you authoritatively that "Only manufactured heatlogs are any good", or "kiln dried is the only answer", but they are very few and far between.

 

Or am I just lucky?