Business Ethic Question
An incident happened today and it gives me pause. I’d like your opinions or perhaps an education/explanation if you disagree. I was a successful business owner for over a decade. Customer satisfaction and retention was non negotiable in my field if you like to eat and pay bills.
Consultations were free, and expected to be free in my industry, so this is out of my wheelhouse.
I hired a local plumbing company to come out and fix our dishwasher. All our attempts had failed.
Guy texts and says he’s finishing at a job a half mile away and then he will be over.
He arrives, walks in, looks at the counter by the sink. He picks up the screw on cap to the air gap, slides the cover off, screws or on, puts the cover back on, and says “Fixed it”.
15 seconds. Never even looked at a pipe. I felt like a total buffoon, it’s true.
But he charged me, a brand new customer, his full service fee. I’m a bit taken back by that. I paid and understand gas and everything else in the business is expensive, but he was a half a mile away originally.
I feel that it would have been fair to be asked to pay even half the fee. But, if my math is correct, and he is ok charging his rate (under $200) then that’s still a crap ton of money from coming out and literally screwing a cap on.
Had he been reasonable about it, he would have retained a customer for life. Every person I’ve had in my home to do anything- a handyman, plumber (the first one charged us $1000 for a spigot to be replaced), electrician, and yard maintenance have all done something shady to add time to the clock. Like hiding around the corner of the garage to take an hour lunch and smoke break on a two hour job, and charging us for three….. Or the company that lifted our settled home and did over $100K in damages then blamed ME for wanting it done???
So maybe I’m just frustrated in general with ethical business practices. Am I way off base here? Instead of stewing over it I’d rather get a better understanding if I’m being ignorant on this. I agreed to the service fee, fair is fair. But sheesh, I don’t think I could ever look someone in the eye again if I did that. Thoughts?
Thanks All!