[dawnwallis]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to rack your brains on a couple of things.


Firstly

I have a fairly new customer (have ironed for him for a while), who is a buddhist.  He claimed that my girls emptied a couple of their urns that they keep the ashes from the incense burners in.  Apparently these ashes are very important to buddhists and, event though my girls said they didnt do it, i was so appalled at how apparently upset he was I agreed to replace the sticks.  So then a week later he accuses my girls of breaking an ornament.  I was fully aware of this broken ornament as I had noted it on my first visit but had not mentioned it as I assumed they were aware (they had cleaners before), basically his note said "we have found this ornament to be broken also".  Well they never mentioned either episode again so I did not respond.  Then last week we went in and he had left a note for me asking for a total of over £400, £250 to get a top artist to mend the ornament and over £160 for incense!  When  I looked at the invoice for the incense he has ordered over 4000 incense sticks!  Well i am not being funny but the bowls he accused us of emptying are already overflowing and that is only a few weeks after the incident so how could he need 4000?  My gut instinct is to tell him I am not paying for them all and will offer him £75 as a goodwill gesture.  Am certainly not paying for ornament as I know we didnt break that.  What do you guys think? Secondly, another client (who previously had accused us of damaging his carpet with bleach when we dont use it) has accused us (two weeks after the event) of scratching his coffee table (antique) with some abrasive cloth, well we use microfibre cloths so this is impossible! what to do...getting me down!

[daz1977]

let ur insurance company deal with it,  when i had a plumbing business, you use to get people try stuff on,  missing laptops, damamged baths etc, as soon as they realise that you aint going to just hand over a load of cash, they usually just drop it, as if ur insurance gets involved, if they are lying then it is fraud

you will be suprised how many people try stuff on

if the bloke was a buddist and the stuff was important to him, then he should pf pointed it out to you not to clean, to me if it looked like ash i woudl bin it thinking that if was off fAgs, 

if you notice any thing damaged  tell the custy before you start,

why did he get rid of the previous cleaners?

[lj domestics]

hello dawn, you must always look for these things when doing your quote, and always point them out to your client and record broken items, sounds like theres a problem somewhere with your girls IMO. regards lizzie jonnson

[daz1977]

r these people in when you are doing the clean, if they are get them to sign off the work at the end of each clean, that they are happy nothing is damaged or broken,  get them to spend a few minutes, having a look, most wont be bothered and will just sign, but if you get any problems, then you have the doc to say that they was happy with the work at the time,   as some people will wait weeks for a problem to arise

i had a bloke when i done his bathroom,  had a leak that would stop and start with the rain,  but he insisted it was the plumbing

[dawnwallis]

lizzie, if my girls were new I might agree with you but these girls have all been working for me for over a year and I have absolute confidence in them.  Tell me, if someone had damaged your coffee table would you leave it two weeks before saying anything?

[dianegreenwood]

Hi Dawn

Unfortunately accusations of breakages and damage are par for the course.  We actually have a £250 excess on our insurance for breakages to discourage claims as venetian blinds and sometimes pictures tend to fall down when you touch them!  Our product damage insurance is full cover though as we would cover the excess.

I frame it up at the sales meeting - we have a £250 excess on our accidental damage insurance because we will at some point move pretty much every ornament/piece of furniture in your home and although we do take every care, accidents do happen.  I then tell them that they should check their household insurance to ensure it covers them as this usually has a much lower excess.

We have had some minor breakages which are always reported to the client immediately.  Only one client has so far withheld £10 for a picture frame.  Others accept that accidents do happen. 

Regarding cleaning damage, scratches, etc we would refer major damage to our insurers.  We did pay a plumber to fix someone's tap once though as it appeared one of the ladies had been a bit rough when turning it.  Suspect it was broken previously but its part of the business to keep clients happy and if that means paying up sometimes, then so be it.  As it was she offered to pay half of the cost so it only cost me £20 and as that client is worth £600 Net Profit per year it was money well spent.

Re this particular client he is taking the pee asking for replacement incense sticks when all you (maybe) threw away was the ash, however you did agree to replace them so it depends how much this client is worth to you as to whether you tell him to get lost or offer him something towards the sticks, but definitely not for all of them.  Ask him outright how many would be reasonable and negotiate.

Re the ornament tell him your insurance company would not pay for it because you would have to inform them that you saw that it was broken before your cleaners started and that you even made a note of it at the time.  Doesn't matter that you didn't point it out to him, he knows it was broken already anyway!

Best of luck and don't take any of it too personally (easily said I know!)

Cheers

Diane

www.freshlymaid.co.uk