We travelled to a village called Flimwell on Friday to clean all carpets in a cottage, we arrived exactly on time at 11.30.
We parked outside and as usual I put my very attractive overshoes on to take a good look at what we had to do (phone quote).
A young woman answered the door, before I had a chance, she said 'my sister phoned your head office and cancelled you yesterday' , I explained that any calls made to our 'head office' arrive in my pocket on my mobile phone and we had received no phone call.
My phone then rang as I was checking my voicemail, I quickly answered, it was the customer who was upstairs 'in the shower' 'oh I phoned xyz carpet cleaning company and not you, I cancelled with them, you can't come in as I have lots of family down'.
I could feel the steam building inside my ears, I calmly told her that I would be charging her £80 for our time and diesel costs (45 minutes travelling) she thought this was unreasonable and told us to get on with it.
I inspected the 'cottage' which turned out to be a large four bedroomed house, nothing had been moved at all, the place was absolutely filthy, knickers on the floor, dinner plates every where, the place looked as though it hadn't been vacuumed in weeks, I then noticed large green patches. 'Have you any idea what this is?' I asked, 'yea, my son was spraying toys, you will get it all out won't you?'
At this point, I told the customer I was leaving, my gut feeling was that we should go, the job was far larger than I was lead to believe and the prospect of picking up stuff for half an hour didn't appeal either, I also anticipated payment problems too.
I have thought about this a few times since, would anyone else of handled the situation in another way?
Regards
S
