What is the craziest thing you have ever had a customer do to you?

Scott Stone

Scott Stone

New member
I had a customer when I first started out that was trying to catch me not doing the work I was contracted to do. I was detailing buses for a city, so he went into one of the buses and put a pencil mark on the ceiling of one of the buses, and tried to claim that I did not wipe the ceiling down when the mark was there on Monday morning. I invited him to use soap and water to get the mark off, as the scope called for, and he still thought i was responsible to get the mark off. Idiot.
Same guy had me cleaning concrete years later. As I was cleaning the concrete, I started noticing small X's on the sidewalk in chalk. Always in the same relative location. It did not take long to figure out what was up, when I saw them 40 or 50 different times.
People like that always make me wonder how honest they are.
 
He is not honest People act that way because in thier mind that is how they work and they belive that is the way everyone works. Best advice I have is to confront them with your obsrvations about their behavior and ask them point blank if they trust you and want you to continue to work for them. I see that alot in KEC work and there are two things that make that behavior happen.
Certian cultures simply ingrain the idea that everyone else out there except them are going to rip them off
2 they geuinely have been ripped off by a past contractor and they have concerns. In those cases a heart to heart talk goes a long way to building trust and a bunch of before/after pictures goes even further.
 
Reschedule a job twice because the HO wanted to "be there" when I cleaned their house/roof then canceled when I asked to reschedule, because they were going to be out of town and wanted to mail me the check "in a week or so". The Guy also made up a a bunch of conditions that were never discussed like claiming I was supposed to start at 9 am and went all legal sounding with questions like "are you or are you not coming this morning" (even though he said he was leaving in 10 minutes).

About 15 minutes after agreeing to drop everything and rush to clean his home that he wouldn't see for a week or so and wouldn't pay till he did, I called him back and politely explained that we would not be coming and if he wanted us to do the job we would do it upon his return if he called and scheduled us. He was a CEO/Owner of a pretty large company and I suppose he was used to bullying vendors. Ironically, he was referred to me by one of his employees that we did two home for.
 
When we were doing the dry clean delivery I had an a$$hole car salesman who asked us to get some pants altered. He had gained a lot of weight and wanted the pants taken out an inch and a half.

We took them to our seamstress (old lady in her 80's and about 4 ft tall - 80 or so lbs) and had her let out the waist.

Upon return the guy did something unusual and pulled his pants out and started inspecting them right away. (not normal) He turned them around to the front and started yelling at me saying we had ruined the hook on the pants clasp and ripped it loose on the pants. The hook had been stressed so far it had actually moved about a 1/2 inch and left a trail of torn fabric behind it. No big deal anyway, If he wanted that sewn up and reinforced he could have just told us to begin with and we would have done it for a couple of bucks. But he started yelling and screaming on the showroom floor that we had ruined his pants.

I asked him HOW could our seamstress have ruined his clasp when all she did was let out the back?

He said she must have clasped it and them PULLED on it and torn it to test her work.

By this point I realize this guy is just a Bulls$it artist.

He starts demanding loudly that we give him $175.00 for his pants.

The brand of pants he had only come from ONE place. JC Penneys. I used my speaker phone right there in front of everybody and called and asked if they had that size pants in stock and how much they were. $19.00 was the answer.

I immediately informed him that my 80 year old seamstress would have much harder time pulling that clasp apart then his fat azz gut would and that he tore up those pants with his ever expanding gut.

I threw the guy's pants on the ground and told him what a lying sack he was and informed him that if he had any trouble shoving those pants up his a$$ I'd be glad to help him with it.

This drew a round of applause from the audience of salesmen who had gathered (because they knew what a sack he was)

That day I signed up 4 new customers before leaving the store. I guess this guy was a manager or something and he was like this to everybody. He only lasted a few weeks there after that.

6 months later we saw him again. He was our waiter on one of Shelly's and my nights out. He was kissing a lot of butt but never offered an apology.

At least I got my money back on those pants by not having to tip that night.
 
Tony Shelton said:
When we were doing the dry clean delivery I had an a$$hole car salesman who asked us to get some pants altered. He had gained a lot of weight and wanted the pants taken out an inch and a half.

We took them to our seamstress (old lady in her 80's and about 4 ft tall - 80 or so lbs) and had her let out the waist.

Upon return the guy did something unusual and pulled his pants out and started inspecting them right away. (not normal) He turned them around to the front and started yelling at me saying we had ruined the hook on the pants clasp and ripped it loose on the pants. The hook had been stressed so far it had actually moved about a 1/2 inch and left a trail of torn fabric behind it. No big deal anyway, If he wanted that sewn up and reinforced he could have just told us to begin with and we would have done it for a couple of bucks. But he started yelling and screaming on the showroom floor that we had ruined his pants.

I asked him HOW could our seamstress have ruined his clasp when all she did was let out the back?

He said she must have clasped it and them PULLED on it and torn it to test her work.

By this point I realize this guy is just a Bulls$it artist.

He starts demanding loudly that we give him $175.00 for his pants.

The brand of pants he had only come from ONE place. JC Penneys. I used my speaker phone right there in front of everybody and called and asked if they had that size pants in stock and how much they were. $19.00 was the answer.

I immediately informed him that my 80 year old seamstress would have much harder time pulling that clasp apart then his fat azz gut would and that he tore up those pants with his ever expanding gut.

I threw the guy's pants on the ground and told him what a lying sack he was and informed him that if he had any trouble shoving those pants up his a$$ I'd be glad to help him with it.

This drew a round of applause from the audience of salesmen who had gathered (because they knew what a sack he was)

That day I signed up 4 new customers before leaving the store. I guess this guy was a manager or something and he was like this to everybody. He only lasted a few weeks there after that.

6 months later we saw him again. He was our waiter on one of Shelly's and my nights out. He was kissing a lot of butt but never offered an apology.

At least I got my money back on those pants by not having to tip that night.
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I'd have paid good money to have seen that! About as satisfying as having the jerk behind you finally pass and get pulled over by the cops. Too funny.
 
John in 8 years of that business and somewhere in the vicinity of 4000 individual customers he is the only one to have ever done anything like that. That's why he's so easy to remember.

The only other "confrontation" I ever had was with another car salesman. One of my drivers was a black guy. He was a great family guy and a good, reliable employee. Thomas was his name. For some reason this Top salesman at a prestigious car dealership had it in for Thomas. One day he would tell Thomas he couldn't park near this door, then the next day he couldn't park near that door. Thomas was meek and just put up with it. Then one day he called me and asked if I could take him off the route that took him to that store.

It seems the car salesman had come out in front of a lot of customers and called Thomas a bunch of foul names for parking near one of the entrances. He berated him for being stupid and called him some racist names even though they were both black.

So I, of course, being me, jumped in my car and headed to the dealership and told the GM that I wanted this anus to apologize to Thomas in front of everybody who heard it. The GM wouldn't make him do it because this guy was the top salesman and everybody kisses his butt. So I confiscated every dry cleaning bag from every customer at the store and switched them to home delivery and we never came to that store again.

The GM called me a month or so later wanting to know if I could sign him up an deliver to his home and I told him I would as soon as the anus apologized to Thomas publicly.

In an ironic twist, about a year later I moved into our house. Who do you think lives across the street and one house down? That's right....The anus.

We've never spoken. Not once.

Well, that's it, That's the only two bizarre confrontations in eight years of Vegas Valley Valet Cleaners existence.
 
We have had the same thing happen from many customers. We will have a customer for years (both fleet and hoods). The drivers or cooks, or managers will have our business cards and many have our numbers in their phones.
As the economy went sour we had a lot of customers tell us they needed a drastic price reduction or they had to switch to another company. We inform them that our quality service cost (and most of them were on a loyalty pricing that had not gone up for years). Needless to say, we lost a lot of customers. We would get calls from drivers in the mornings saying we need to fire our new crews and requesting for return service naming specific guys from our team. They typically were understanding when we informed them that their terminal had switched to another company.
With hood cleaning, it is a very different matter. The chefs would call us up livid! They would cuss, scream, and shout "you left a huge mess in our kitchen last night and there is no way we can clean it up in time to serve lunch! Just wait until the owner/manager gets here! You are going to be so screwed! We're going to sue your azz!" The first call like that was answered by a guy that just didn't seem to know any better. He dispatched a crew to clean up. The guys got in and cleaned the kitchen to better than it had ever been and as they finished they noticed the sticker on the hood! The crew foreman was very slick (not slick enough to catch it early) and he just apologized for the inconvenience. He left some marketing materials and his personal business card and said they can give him a call directly in three months after the new hood cleaners cleaned their hood, AGAIN! He quietly walked out as the kitchen manager was realizing that we had not made the mess, but graciously melted away all of their troubles and ensured they opened on time that day! Long story shortened, we are back to cleaning them on a very regular basis at a considerably increased price!
We get a call like this, still, about once a month. We now expect it and react by requesting they give us information from the hood sticker. As they read that info, they either apologize or sometimes hang up in embarrassment.
 
Great story Kyle.

Can you pm me where you buy your stickers? I am looking at having some made and obviously having them on hoods and lasting at least a few months they should last other places longer. I do not clean vents but I am thinking of having some good quality stickers made that will last a while.

Thanks.
 
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