Lost a referral because the client remembered me as "cash only"
Referrals drive most of my work, good job, client tells someone, that person calls me. I protect that chain carefully because it took years to build.
Last spring I finished a deck rebuild for a long-time client. He referred me to his neighbor a few weeks later, new fence, good job. Got to the end of it and the neighbor wanted to pay card, my reader had stopped pairing and I didn't have a backup… told her I'd send an invoice.
She paid two days later, fine but three months after that she referred me to someone in her neighborhood, and when that person called me he mentioned she'd told him I only take check. That's not what happened. That's what she remembered.
One payment hiccup and the story traveling with my name became that I'm the contractor who doesn't take cards. I found out because the referral told me directly, which was lucky, most of the time you'd never know.
Fixed the setup after that but the damage to that referral chain is something I can't fully measure.