Had to issue a refund today

In biz for 7 years and it's the third refund I have issued. no matter how well you set expectations and communicate with customers some folks you just can't make happy. She said that Angies emailed her and the asked her to leave a review and she didn't want to do that . Yeah right. I refunded her half the ticket for a job I did over a month ago

So you gave refund because she was asked to leave a review?!?     

I don't give refunds............so I guess I don't get it.

No she wasn't happy with the results and mentioned Angies list.

the old angies list threat lol

I have I think 2 bad reviews out of 120 or something and the two I just discredited the customer by mentioning the type of stain that wouldnt come out...    they were both dirty people with un realistic expectations

so I just politely wrote a paragraph on how urine sometimes cant be removed,    if someone even reads that many pages of reviews in then they will get a picture in their mind of what the customers house looked like without me making the response sound rude.

We bend over backwards to make our customers happy and my policy is if I can't make you happy I won't take your money. With that said if you call me within a week i'll offer to come back out for free - if they are adamant about just getting a refund I'll mail them a check. If it's after a week or two or even three and they say their not happy, the best I will do is offer to come back and re-clean it at no charge. If you call me after three weeks I politely tell them to pound sand. Out of over 2500 jobs a year I typically refund two or three, leave four or five without getting paid (politely telling them to call stan), and leave less than ten (including people in the aforementioned groups) completely piss off. My repeats and referrals are great, and I hope that the people I completely piss off tell their friends because I can't imagine I would want to do business with them either. I can live with those numbers. It translates in to better than 98-99% satisfaction - which is higher than most businesses.

I have very few bad reviews on Angie's and I have discredited them point by point. Normal people understand that you can't make everyone happy no matter how hard you try and they also understand that some customers are just jerks.

Now see, what we need is a Joe List where you guys can write this stuff, so eloquently avoiding names...... then if we could get consumers to read it we've got a way to level the playing field. What do ya think?

I talked to Joe when to cat lady tried that stunt. I stuck to my guns and she paid. I was threated with the review thing to. I say let em do it. Then we run to our associates and we all leave reviews backing each other with proof positive that we are who we are. We can take back this review threat easy. I thought I was gonna have a review threat and was gonna let them do it. Then I planned on coming here and letting you guys know about the situational request to do follow up reviews. The day the customer owns review boards is over!!!!!!!

Joes List is now birthed!!!!

I was just thinking if I had ever given a refund. Can't think of any; not in all my 17 years.
Closest I came was an installation I did.

Met the lady at ProSource, helped her pick it out, she went super cheap, with several kids.
I advised against it but she was cheap, so I laid it.

A year later she calls to complain. Not me mind you, but the Prosource where we bot the goods. I get a call from the owner of the Prosource telling me she had called to complain. 
She was trying to go around me. Get the picture? 
Mr Prosource told me he was going out to personally inspect my work.  I said, "please do!"
He called back to tell me it was installed correctly. No shoot Sherlock.
Mrs. Cheapskate got stuck with her rag of a carpet and I got to go back to work.  

Fear not these threats. Just do good work!

If they give you a bad review, you come here and tell your side of it.

review black mail your not the only one she had done this to

as long as your able to give a response to the review you can discredit them pretty easily, assuming most of your reviews are good.

as long as you do good work its most likely a customer that cant be pleased no matter what.


One of our bad reviews was a guy with pee stains under a window that gets lots of sun, I told him its very likely these will not be removable. It was a small dog, told him its like pure acid on the carpet.

they didnt come out and he bashed us, so I discredited him completely in the response and then it was buried with new reviews in no time.

Mo wrote:In biz for 7 years and it's the third refund I have issued. no matter how well you set expectations and communicate with customers some folks you just can't make happy. She said that Angies emailed her and the asked her to leave a review and she didn't want to do that . Yeah right. I refunded her half the ticket for a job I did over a month ago

You did the right thing, the way I see it is it's not worth the headaches, especially on busy seasons, pay up and move on with your life, just don't forget to black list that customer's name and address in your schedule.
What we need is a website with a list of bad customer's info, such as their name and address, I'm happy to pay the subscriptions fee for that just to cross check some customer's info.

There will always be professional complainers out there and you will run into one  at some point in your professional life.

My family's shop only had one customer like that in over 30 years.  That one person had sued nearly every business in that small town over a 3 year period.  Word of mouth finally caught up with him and he was run out of town after every business refused service.

In a world where internet reviews are so important there needs to be a recourse for an honest businessman to expose these pro complainers.  The only concern would be a dishonest business attacking an honest negative review...double-edged sword really.

I say let word of mouth win out.  I tend to distrust what I read on the internet anyway.....well, except here. 

That's what I was thinking DP. One review on angies isn't going to break or make me