Right to refuse work??

[fastfredracing]

I have owned my auto repair buisness for 16 years now. In the beginning I scratched and kicked, and did every junk piece of crap job that came through the door. I did whatever I had to do to make a living, put up with all of the pain in the ass type people, fixed all the junk nobody else wanted to etc......
Fast forward 15 years. I slimmed down my buisness, I am a one man operation. My overhead is low, and I have tons of work. Even though my job is not easy, it is relatively easy for me to make money.
I took on a job this past week that I really did not want to do. I found the customer a little weird, and your typical hard to please type. His car was a pia, and no one else local wanted to fix it. I tried to put him off , but after several weeks of him hounding me, I reluctantly did it. It turned out exactly as I expected. The job took an extra day,( waiting for parts), pissed off customer, and now he is not pleased with what I did. I spent over an hour on the phone with him yesterday , and he is sort of hard to deal with.
I have been through this a million times in my life, and I am wondering, why do I do it? Is it o.k. to just say no to a potential customer, for whatever reason? If I have plenty of work that pays well from good longtime customers, Why do a job that will make less money, and causes more problems?
I guess I am not asking if I have the right to refuse to do jobs that I dont want to do, rather, is it ethical?, and a good buisness practice?

[Jim Richards]

Originally Posted by fastfredracing

Is it o.k. to just say no to a potential customer, for whatever reason?

Yes, but you're better off padding the estimate to do the job in these cases, and let the customer turn you down.

[Oh Haha]

If you turn down too many PIA customers, you might not have to worry about it.

Seriously, from your posts here, you seem like a genuine good guy. With that comes the want to help people. As well, that is your business, to help people when they need their cars repaired.


All that said, it is YOUR business and your hands doing the labor. if you don;t want to deal with a PIA repair job, then politely suggest that he could get faster results from another shop or, as Jim suggested, pad the estimate and let the person walk away. No harm , no foul.

[Moses]

Padding the bill is a poor approach. You could get a reputation for having ridiculous prices. It's also passive-aggressive. Not a terribly honorable approach.

Better to be straightforward. If a customer gives you a weird vibe, just tell him you're not interested in the job. PERIOD. No explanations needed.

[BGCarrera32]

Agree with Moses- one jerk can ruin your reputation if he plays his cards right. You don't have an obligation to explain in detail why you're refusing the job- just say something like you know this one is outside your scope and you have to much to do right now anyway. Nuff said.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

What Jim said. This is done all the time in professional circles. You turn potential losers into a win-win for you by greatly inflating the fee listed in the proposal. Win for you if they decide "no thanks" (less headaches and B.S. to deal with when you can be putting your efforts into more productive clients) and win for you if they say yes ('cause you're making the phat bank).

It usually works better in good times though...

[Dave L]

Just tell the guy that you dont specialize in (blue cars, pontiacs, transmissions, old cars, newer cars etc. pick one) and that he would be better served elsewhere. You dont have to get into too many details but I wouldnt just tell the customer that you dont want to do it.

[scottmandue]

.22 to the back of the head.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

The independent Porsche shop I used to work at, and help now with hard to find parts, turns down work all the time. He won't work on 944s for example. If you turn out to be a "difficult" customer, your car is done to spec and then he won't work on it again.

I agree with Jim. Using your professional experience gained over 15 years, you knew it was going to be a tough job. Padding the estimate knowing you are going to surpass a "by the book" job would have been a wise business move.

What's worse? A high estimate in which the final bill matches, or may even be a little lower?

Or a "by the book" estimate which is surpassed and then the customer thinks you are trying to rip him off?

[red911sc]

PIA/PITA/PIMA factors are quite common. What is wrong with making people pay for your time that THEY will waste. Padding that job serves to pay for the hour you spent on the phone with him, the crap you took for being a day late due to parts, etc. How is this dishonorable? It's called making it worth your while to deal with him.

[Jim Richards]

A good example of why the padded estimate is the hour the difficult customer tied fastfredracing on the phone b!tching.

[KaptKaos]

Firing customers can be cathartic. Try it sometime.

[Jim727]

You don't have any obligation to work for everyone who asks, and you don't have to provide an explanation of why you decline.

One of the great joys of being self-employed is the luxury of choosing who you work with/for. Life's too short to work for jerks.

[cl8ton]

Yes, it's done all the time in the IT services...so I guess that makes it ethical

[cstreit]

You don't have the obligation to take on work, you're not a public servant.

Your quote is the amount that it will take to do the job. That might include the "admin time" that you know will it will take post-sale. Figure it out so that it will be worth it to you.

[Zeke]

Next time you face this customer or another one for whom you don't want to work for, just tell them you are booked up and you will call them when you think there might be an opening. I've never inflated a price to ward off a customer in my contracting business. But, I've turned down a few, mostly be not getting back to them. A couple of times I've told people directly that this was not a job for me.

They are never happy with that, but so what?

I've read your posts about your business before. It has become obvious that you will let someone take an hour of your time on the phone, You have no one to blame but yourself for that. You need to find a device to end the conversation at a few minutes. A good one is to offer to call back. People call you when it's convenient for them. When you pick the time for the call, the tables may be turned to your advantage.

Still, you need to be able to end the conversation, even if you placed the call.

[john walker's workshop]

after almost 30 years running my own business, i can see a red flag coming a mile away, and it ain't coming here. whether it's the customer's attitude, or just a wierd feeling i get about the car or the job, i pass. pay attention to that first impression. it's like a limp handshake.

[trekkor]

Good thread.

I need work, but I'm very likely going to turn it away with this one client.


KT

[MRM]

Fred, this is a topic I am passionate about. I want to encourage you to stick to your guns. Regardless of your profession, you have the right to refuse business to anyone you want. It is ethical and a business requirement. We did away with slavery a few years ago. Since then, Americans have been free to contract (or not contract) with anyone they want. Anyone you don't want to do business with, just tell them you don't want to work on their car and they have to leave. If they get bad with you or don't leave fast enough, tell them they have a second chance before you call the cops to escort them off your property. And if they call and harass you, hang up on them and report the harassment to the cops.

I am a lawyer, and in my business, the saying is that you don't make your money by the clients you accept, you make your money by the ones you turn down. In other words, there are some people who it's going to cost YOU to do work for; if you identify and eliminate them, you are able to make money on your real customers and not waste money on people I call takers. I will tell you that the longer I am in business (I own my own firm and am a one man show for the most part, so we operate pretty much the same) the more I screen potential clients and the pickier I am about taking them on. As a result, I make more with less overhead than ever before.

Even before I owned my own firm, I told every secretary and receptionist I worked with that if anyone swore at them or was rude, to hang up on them and refuse to speak to them, and that I would take care of it. I never had a problem. I did have claims adjusters thank me for getting rid of problem customers - customers who caused trouble and cost the company money.

My wife is an MBA, and in the business workd the expression is that some people are a business oportunity for the competition. Trust me, you are not obligated to try to make every cue ball in the rack happy, and it will not harm your business to have one of them out there badmouthing you. You cannot make them happpy enough to not badmouth you, anyway, so don't spend money trying. You made your reputation and business by making your regular customers happy. Spend your time with them. They'll pay you, be happy to do it, and bring you more business. Getting rid of the bad apples will not hurt your business. It will help it because it gives you more time to give good service to someone who appreciates it. And yes, I do talk in cliches like this in real life. It's an occupational hazzard. I just don't want you taking any more of these people on as customers. For the issue at hand, you just have to be firm and confident enough to stand your ground and not waste time telling people it's time for them to leave you alone. On a longer term basis, you need to develop a distance between yourself and your customers. Call it a command presence. You have to make it clear to them in a nice way that you are in charge of the repairs, you are busy, and that you will give them good customer service, but you cannot waste time holding their hands unless they pay you. It is acceptable to tell people who call you repeatedly that you are happy to talk to them, but that you are charging shop rates for your time to talk beyond the normal. The only thing worse than not having work is doing work for free. If you aren't getting paid for doing it, why aren't you spending that time fishing? Any time you waste on a non-paying customer is vacation time or billable hours out of your pocket.

[speeder]

I agree with the advice given here. In my business, jobs come up all the time that are undesirable to say the least. And every time my gut has told me not to take on a job and I did it anyways, I lived to regret it. Usually immediately.

An example would be some windows/French doors that I renovated and refinished last year. They were on an historical apartment building in Hollywood that belongs to an acquaintance. The initial job went fine and customer was happy, i got paid with no drama. A short time later, he called me to do some small "handyman" type stuff that is not what I normally do. It happened more than once, first it was a minor plumbing issue then some other repair. I tried to brush him off but he practically begged so I drove over after work, (during L.A. rush hour), and did it both times. I will admit that part of the reason is that he had talked about other possible jobs with a prominent designer he knew, etc., and I wanted to stay in his good graces. To make a long story long, I was never paid for the "extras" I did for this jerk and had to go through an increasingly unpleasant set of demands for it before giving up and writing him off. BTW, in my experience when people talk a big game about all of the work they will send you, it never happens. It's almost like it's part of their game to get something for nothing.

My uncle is a banker, as was my GF. Both are/were well-regarded in their communities, very charitable, etc... My uncle once told me that his dad had a saying, "don't loan money to people you don't like". He would never have discriminated in a bigoted way, (even back in the 1930s when it was probably legal), he simply meant "don't do business with jerks. You'll be sorry."