[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.