"I want this for free"

[spaman--]

O.k I walk in this morning and first thing that I am faced with is a customer wanting free delivery of their cover and free disposal of their old one because the manufacturer took 4 weeks to get us her cover. The second thing I am faced with, Maxx had to exchange a spa for one of its customers (which I facilitated on a 4 year old Elite spa) I am out sourcing deliveries and my guy is charging me $300 for exchanging the spa so I am passing this same fee to the customer. The customer was demanding that I deliver it for free. This afternoon a customer calls regarding a problem with a bromine cartridge that has dumped out, I have someone delivering and changing it out with 2 new ones for free, The customer asked for extra chemicals for free for his inconvenience. Lastly the phone rings and its a gentleman who has a spa that is in Economy mode and even though I have personally walked him through it several times in person at the store. Don't get me wrong I believe in doing my share of freebies, but lets face it if I did each of these things today alone the bare bones hard cost would be at least $550. All of this and still trying to make a profit. I am going to start a log to show how many and how much people want at a discount and for free.

This just in, a lady calls in and can't get her filters out wants us to perform a service call (you guessed it for free).

What I have learned is that once you give service or product for free it it sets a standard that all future problems and products should be free or discounted. I use to stop off and perform service for those customers on my way home for free but at times I would find myself out until 10 or 11 o'clock. So I have learned that all customers, friends and especially family pay the same amount and service is not performed for free. There is the occasional exception but for the most part we as retailers have to stick to our guns. Especially in times like these where the entire spa industry in down in sales.

There are the few that know that I would perform any service call for cheesecake but theres only a few that know of this huge discount.

[Zep]

i once had an employee tell me:

"If these dad-burn customers would leave me alone I could get my work done"

[Cyn]

Don't you just love dealing with the public?  :-?

[East_TX_Spa]

[clover]

I feel your pain.  It seems when you do good and try hard, it is often not enough to satisfy the expectations of the customer.  Everyone is different, but the cover customer, the replacement Hot Tub from Maxx, and everyone you deal with on the telephone FEEL that it is in YOUR best interest to do it for them FREE, or else because it should not cost them anything for your service.  Amazingly, this attitude is prevalent and works occasionaly, only because we want to help them with their problem expecting them to refer business to us.  It never comes.  

Sometimes, you gotta FIRE the customer.

[IL Parrothead]

Spaman, it's the same in every business.  I have some close friends that I've done free legal work for.  Now they blow a gasket if I want to charge them for anything.  I feel your pain, brother.

[Jacuzzi Jim]

 This will be the first year a lot of our 5 year old Jacuzzi's will be going out of warranty, should be an interesting year.


 I always like the ones that call and say??   Our spa has not ran for 2 weeks, and I am not very happy with it, and proceed to vent about it!!!

  While I listen to them, I am thinking?

 WHAT?  You think I can read minds or something? You think we have a direct link from your spa to our computer?   We cant freaking fix it, if I we don't know its broke ya dumb-ss. So on and so on.  

 But I dont, I just grill em a bit about whats wrong, and tell them, we will take care of it.  

[ndabunka]

In my industry we do a LOT of work for the major cellular companies.  They often EXPECT lots of things for free that were not listed in their Statements of Work (SOW).   The PURPOSE of an SOW is to define and price services UP FRONT.  If it's not in the SOW, it's not included.  Unfortunately, this doesn't always hold water and there "big boys" are sometimes heard saying things like "Well, if you EVER want me to sign another SOW you will do this for free...".  We've come up with a great way to handle it.  We simply write out a normal statement/invoice outlining what it would NORMALLY cost and then stamp "Goodwill" on it.  This serves a number of purposes.  The first is to show that there is ACTUAL real costs associated with the pro-bono efforts (in the event they ever DO realize that they SHOULD have paid for it originally) and secondarily, it gives you documentation to pull out the next time they ask for more free stuff.  In our case, we may have 20 or 30 of these documents for $5K or $20K here or there.  When they DEMAND we do a $100K effort for FREE, we simply pull out all the prior "free" efforts and demonstrate that we have ALREADY given a LOT of little stuff for free, it's now THEIR time to compensate us properly for this "bigger" effort.

Bottom line =  Sometimes it is just easier and smarter to "give away"  the little stuff (trip charges) so that you can get them to pay for the bigger stuff later down the road (i.e. their next tub)

[Zep]

speaking of freebies......

has anybody else seen a large increase in the last few years of clients.....large clients asking for donations to their Company Christmas Party?

we did not see much of this a few years ago, but now we get alot of requests (pressure) for donations of like gift certificates that they can give away to the employees at the annual Christmas Party.

Dear XYZ,

The Law Firm of Jones, Smith, & Jones is planning a company Holiday Party on December 10th. We are seeking donations from vendors for the holiday raffle we have at the gala. If interested please forward a gift certificate and your name will be announced as a donor at our party.

[East_TX_Spa]

ndabunka, I like ya'lls idea!  I think we'll try that.

Zep, we've never been asked for donations for Christmas parties, but we get hit up all the time to donate door prizes to various entities.  I usually give them a Spa Vac or some aromatherapy products in a gift basket.

We donate 4 spas/year for fundraisers: The Cattle Baron's Ball, The Museum of Fine Arts fundraiser, the Beat Up Women's Shelter, and I think one for wayward teens.

Term

[Zep]

4 spas a year?

wow....at what 6-10K each?

that seems like alot for a spa store in tyler, texas

i am gonna stop complaining about giving away twenty $50 Chilis gift certificates!

[Chad]

Spaman, it's the same in every business.  I have some close friends that I've done free legal work for.  Now they blow a gasket if I want to charge them for anything.  I feel your pain, brother.

Tell me about it.
I lost count awhile ago of all the freebie tile jobs I've given to friends and family. Most of the installs were fairly small and simple, so not that big of a deal. But it's when they call me back for a second, much larger job and are shocked that I actually want to be compensated for my labor this time around.
It's gotta stop at some point.

[Pathfinder]

In my experience I find pool customers ask for way more than my spa customers. But at least its not bad going to houses in the summer. Most annoying is a 9 pm phone call saying their pool is leaking and its a slow dripping hose or the pools not running ands its the timer that shut off.  I give everyone a free "stupidity" common sense service call.  On the next call like that its either $50 or $100 depending on time of day and how far.  I feel  I  have educated most my customer base enough that common sense calls should be rare or can be fixed over the phone.

Spaman - you have my full sympathy on days like you have just described.

[In Canada eh]

Funny story along the same lines as Chads,

   I had a group of friends in my teens, 6 of the greatest group of guys, everyone of them would give you the shirt off their back if you asked.  Well 5 of us all got into the tool and die/tool and mold industry and the other became an electrician.  Well you can guess how that turned out for him!!!.  The poor guy (Chris) has since pretty much wired everyone of our houses top to bottom and any other job too complicated for any of us to try on our own.  A couple of years ago he announced while having drinks with the group, that all of us idiots better hope that he never needs to have a mold or die produced.  He figured that if he was to have billed us it would have collectively been close to $50,000, I was shocked that we had abused his friendship to that extent and apologised for the group.  We now either pay him or hire another electrician if needed.

[D.P. Roberts]

A competing bookstore opened up down the street from us a year or two ago. They immediately started offering higher discounts, free shipping, etc. to my biggest customers, who immediately asked us to match what the competition was offering. Every day we heard from people who were mad that we wouldn't match prices or discounts, and swearing that we were losing another customer to our competition.

However, I knew that the competitors were giving away their margin (they buy their books from the same wholesalers we do) and basically working for free - or losing money. We stuck to our guns, as there was no way we could do any better than what we were offering.

Our competitor closed their doors last July.  Our sales have jumped way back up since then.