Now, I can understand if it’s a larger contract like a whole-house tile job and the contractor has never done business with you before, but when it’s the 6th job of that size for the same customer and they still offer to make the trip all the way across town to your office to “drop off the invoice” which means “drop off the invoice and collect payment,” I don’t get it.

One the other side of the coin, there is one local roofing company I’ve done business with completely over the phone from start to finish. I couldn’t tell you what the people in the office look like because I’ve never met them. I would venture to say that the administrative staff in that office are probably on a first name basis with the clerks in the county courthouse due to the number of liens they file for non-payment. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but isn’t this remedy (filing a mechanical lien) available to ALL contractors?

I mean, I’m sure it’s kind of a pain to file, but once it’s done, the owner of the property can’t really do anything major with the property until that lien holding contractor is paid.

I think that in the future, I’m going to insist that the contractors I work with, mail me the invoice. I will in turn mail them back a check, usually the next day. When they see that they will get paid faster that way, maybe they will stop offering to come to my office and engage me in some meaningless small-talk about the weather, all in an effort to get paid on time.

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Contractors With Trust Issues

The tenants had “maintained” the yard by cutting the lawn about once every 2-3 months which in Florida, in the summer, is a big no-no. For those readers not familiar with Florida lawn care, you have to cut the grass every week in the summer to prevent the grass from growing as tall as your waist.

The lawn crew we hired consisted of three men and this job took them 7 hours of work so you can get an idea of how overgrown the yard was.

Before the tenants moved out, they hired some local yahoo to cut the grass so they would not be charged for lawn care come move-out inspection day. He did not do a very good job. That is, he did not edge or weed-whack. He just cut the grass.

So, it’s now 3 weeks later and the local yahoo calls me up to “complain” that the yard is looking terrible and that maybe I should come down to the property to take a look. Also, if we didn’t want to be fined by the city, he could cut it for us.

I let him know that we had it covered and all was well. He again complained that the grass was getting too tall and I should reconsider who I got to cut the grass because “I need to come down there to check the work.” I finally had to hang-up on the guy because he wouldn’t take “No” for an answer.

Nice sales technique buddy!

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Fruit Cake Lawn Care

Basically, due to a recent tropical storm, this company was behind with their service calls and sent out an incompetent technician who came out to the property at the very end of the day, misdiagnosed the problem, added freon and promptly left.

The next day I called to let the company know that their guy didn’t fix the problem. They promised to send someone else out who, arrived at the very end of the day, properly diagnosed (but did not fix) the problem and again, promptly left.

The following day, a Friday, I again called the company who let me know that they were backed up on service calls and they would not be able to come out until Tuesday, due to the Labor Day weekend.

Not wanting to subject my tenants to sweltering temperatures for another three days, I called another company who promptly sent someone out and fixed the problem.

Here’s where it gets interesting; Two weeks later, I received a bill from the first HVAC company for a service call. I called the company and was gruffly told by a female receptionist that, “[I] called for a service call and [I] would have to pay for it.” I explained the situation to her to which she replied, “Well, [she's] been in business for 40 years and [she's] obviously doing something right.”

Not wanting to argue any further with this lady who obviously has a Ph.D. in customer service, I ignored the bill. The next month, I received another invoice with interest added which I also ignored.

In January, I received a letter from someone else in the HVAC company threatening me with legal action if I did not pay their invoice including the interest.

I calmly replied, in writing, to this person explaining the situation including that I had to call another company to repair the problem because they were backed up and could not complete the repair 5 days from the first call for service. Soon after, I received a letter requesting a copy of the other company’s invoice which I duly mailed. A couple of days later, I received a phone call saying that they would be voiding the invoice in question for which I thanked them. Done and done.

Needless to say that I will not be doing business with this company again due to my experience but this didn’t have to go down like this. Here’s how they could have prevented this situation:

1. Don’t bill customers for services not performed
2. Don’t threaten legal action for a $100 invoice when it would cost at least $500 to pursue
3. Get “Dr. Crab Ass” off the phones and back into the hole where she lives
4. Communicate (calmly) with customers
5. Be up-front with a customer when a service can not be performed for whatever reason

Sheesh!

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The Cost of Threatening Legal Action

When they first told me about the situation, I immediately called the A/C company who installed the unit about 2 years ago. They’re usually pretty good and reliable. This time however, they gave me an ETA window of between 10am to 12 noon. They didn’t show up until 5:30pm. When the A/C tech did show up he quickly said, “Oh, all you need is some freon.” There was no improvement in the cooling of the system.

The next morning at about 8:30am, I called the A/C company back to let them know that the problem still was not fixed. They again put me on the schedule and again the same A/C tech showed up at 5pm. This time, he said that the evaporator coils (that actually do the cooling) were clogged and needed to be removed and cleaned. I let him know that I need to be put on the schedule for first-thing in the morning.

So now, Friday, the day before the Labor Day weekend, I called at 10am to ask what time a tech would be on-site. I was told by the office staff that they are behind two days due to Tropical Storm Fay and they would try to make it but they couldn’t make any guarantees. Would I like to set up an appointment for next week Tuesday. WTF?!! We ended up calling another company who came on-site, fixed the problem and didn’t even charge for a Saturday visit.

Edit: The company that did come out on Saturday is a small outfit called Freedom Air & Heat Inc. They don’t even have a web site to my knowledge.

I should mention that this screw-up of a company,  Weather Engineers is one of the largest A/C contractors in Brevard County Florida. They are too busy to service a “little guy” and their office staff can’t even say, “Listen, we’re backed up due to the storm. You may want to call another company.”

Well, all I can say is that they just lost another customer. Nice work!

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Weather Engineers For The FAIL

I got a recommendation from a local real estate agent for a good AC company here in Melbourne Beach, FL. The guy that came out is the president of the company, installer, salesman and service technician. Basically a one man show.

What impressed me with this guy is that there was no sales pitch. He spoke about the product line (Trane) and his recommendation for the size of the house, etc. I asked some questions which he answered intelligently and completely. At the end of the meeting he said, “I’m not a salesman, I’m just an A/C guy.”

That impressed me because when I used to go to potential client’s offices, back in the day, to talk with them about their computer networks, I basically did the same thing. I expressed what I thought they would need to solve their specific problem and that was it. I think they sensed that I wasn’t trying to “sell” them anything.

In fact, it was true. I really didn’t care if they bought anything from me at all. As far as I was concerned, I was there to help them solve a problem. If I could help, great. If not, great.

In the end, I chose the system with the highest efficiency rating (and probably the most expensive), the 17.5 SEER Trane XL19i.

Boy does that thing rock! I turned the thermostat down just to see how low it would go. It was only about 81 °F outside so it cooled pretty quickly. I realized it was pretty cold when I noticed my Husky-Shepard mix was curled up on her wool bed with her tail covering her nose (which happens all the time in the one winter month we have here in Florida)

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New Air Conditioning System (finally)

Getting an electrician to come out, however, is another story. So far, I’ve had electricians say that they will be there at a certain time and not show up. I’ve also had one electrician say he can’t make it out for a full month.

I mean really, I will pay for the services, on the spot if necessary, but this is getting pretty ridiculous. Brevard County is still growing and I think that when enough of the general public starts demanding decent service, the contractors will fall into line….hopefully.

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Contractor Arm Twisting

This lawn service in particular is the worst at customer service not to mention they do a completely half-assed job. Case in point, I drove by the property one time and they had not weed-whacked the grass next to the house in so long that the grass was about three feet high and growing up the side of the house.

When I call to complain, they do not return calls and sometimes, only sometimes, do they actually remedy the problem. Not to mention, the owner, who actually works on the crew, has never so much as come to the door to introduce himself after he bought the lawn service business from my old lawn guy.
If I need to communicate with him, it’s usually by mail and there is no response. If he needs to communicate with his customers he does the following:

If he needs to change his contact phone number (what’s the point?), he will change it on the bill heading and not take the time to write a note or highlight the fact that the number has changed.

If he wants to let his customers know to write checks to him personally rather then to the business name, he has a rubber stamp made and stamps all the invoices before they go out.

There’s something to be said for doing a little public relations sometimes. For instance, in my other job, I do most of my work remotely. My customers are about 100 miles away on average. Yet, about every couple of months, I find a way to stop in to their offices so that they can see my face and interact with me on a personal level. It’s just so that they know who they’re sending their checks to. It makes them feel warm and fuzzy (I think) to see me every so often and so far, it’s worked out OK.

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New lawn service company

I might mention by-the-way that I NEVER give tenants or contractors my cell phone number but sometimes I forget to change the setting on my phone so that it displays “Private Caller” on their caller-id display and so they think that they are being “assertive” by calling my cell phone. I have an office number for them to call which pages me immediately and I call them back….usually immediately.

Case in point, I used to own a seasonal rental house near the beach a few years ago. A  woman who rented the house for about two months was a little bit of a kook. Something about needing her 3 Labrador Retrievers with her because they “help her write” some book that she was writing. Whatever. She proceeded to call me on my cell phone at 11:00pm on a Saturday night (while I was out at a restaurant no less) to ask me how to use the VCR (!!!) WTF!?

Anyway, I recently started using a free software package called Asterisk. Asterisk will turn an old computer that you may have laying around into a free private-branch exchange (PBX). It can behave like a simple office phone system but it can also give you the ability to “appear” to be calling from somewhere (the office) when you’re really placing the call from elsewhere (your cell phone).

It’s really neat! In addition to this functionality, you can also set it up to forward calls from a certain number to something called a softphone which is basically a piece of software which behaves like a phone.

Theoretically, you could be anywhere in the world and attached to the internet, where you could receive and place calls from a number local to the caller.

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Using technology to keep tenants and contractors in line

I should explain that this rental house used to be the home of some good friends of hers, who we bought the house from because they were getting too old to deal with it. Back in 2004, a hurricane had just blown through and took some roof shingles and siding off the house and they didn’t want to fix the damage.

I should also explain that these people bought these houses back in the 1970′s when they had just retired from their single company careers up north (railroad, IBM, etc.). I know that there is more pride-in-ownership when you own a home as opposed to rent it, but I think that these people were just anal-retentive about maintenance and appearance.

Apparently, back in the day, they used to rush out and do stuff like cut the grass when it got to 1.25 inches tall, trim shrubs when they started looking just a little bit scraggly and paint the house every year. Because that’s what you did when you were Beaver Cleaver’s parents.
Well, what I’ve been doing is trying to get the yard in line with the rest of our rentals in that, the ground covering of the entire yard is basically weeds. When we get torrential rains in the summertime, the yard gets really green and lush “looking.” When the weather gets really hot and we have near drought conditions, the yard turns brown. And then at the slightest hint of humidity, the yard turns back green again.

What was covering the ground at this house was what is called St. Augustine grass which is a strain of grass that thrives in saltier environments (like near the beach) and generally damp environments. It grows thick and green when a) there is plenty of water b) it is not stressed by drought or bugs and c) it is fertilized regularly. Now what happened in the past was that the people that owned the house would irrigate the lawn 3 times a week and hired a lawn treatment service to spray all kinds of chemicals to keep bugs away so as a result the lawn was perfect.

What happened when we put tenants in the house was that they parked cars on the grass and the wonderful lawn-maintenance people, who we pay, destroyed the irrigation system with their huge lawnmowers, so the grass died! Duh!

All it needs now is for a different lawn guy (because the regular ones don’t trim shrubs) to go in there and clean it up. In time, it will be in line and all will be fine. However, I had to listen to this neighbor whine to me on the phone this morning about how the yard is “breaking her heart” whenever she looks at it. But I need to listen to this because when the tenants start shooting off fireworks INSIDE THE HOUSE, I need her to call me, so we have to stay friendly.

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My tenant’s grumpy neighbor

The lawn guy called today to say that the yard is pretty much a mess and he just doesn’t have time to do it right now. That’s fine but that yard needs some work.

On another note, rents are due tomorrow. I can’t wait to hear the excuses tomorrow.

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Update on the contractor situation