What's your limit ?

Went to last customer's home yesterday evening around 5, gave him a courtesy call and he said that he won't be there for another hour, asked me if I'm willing to wait for him, I was 15 minutes away, I agreed to wait for him, after waiting 45 minutes, he called and he said that he's still 20 - 25 minutes away and asked me if I'm still willing to wait for him, he moved out of the unit and live 30 miles away and drove there just to meet me to get the carpets cleaned, he's my repeat customer, I hesitated but agreed to wait, he finally showed up after about 30 minutes, I know traffic was horrible at that hour but I wasn't happy waited that long, what made me agreed the 2nd time was I already pulled all my hoses and got everything out ready to clean, I was working by myself, to pack everything up and leave empty handed was kinda hard being that was the last job.
How long are you willing to wait for your customer if that customer is your last stop ?

He provided updates, which shows he cares about the situation. If he provided a nice tip and apology for the delay, I would have no problem with that wait as long as it didn't cause me to miss another job.

The way I look at it, if you didn't have another job to get to, you are just waiting for a sure thing instead of at home waiting for a potential call. I can entertain myself for an hour under those conditions.....that would be the longest wait however.

You have a different situation than me. I have to drive 20 minutes to the next town for jobs, so once I am in town, I will stay there all day looking for work. Having to wait for a booked job is part of the routine.

If I lived in the larger cities like you, waiting would not be as acceptable since a new job could place me on the far other side of the city.

In my are an hour wait would be a long wait. You did good DP you showed a lot of patience and hopefully your customer appreciated that. I'm sure at 5:00 PM you would rather be home with the family and relaxing

First time customers not even the first wait.

Repeat customers about as long as you did.

All the above depends of the size of the job.

I think everyone already that responded already pretty much covered it.

*Depends on if it's going to make you late to next job?
*Wither it's a first time customer, that may not value your time, or a good repeat customer just possibly running behind.
*How much you need that job$$$.

*A lot of different factors can help make my decision on how long to wait, so I don't have a set time.........but I'm not the most patient person either.

one lady did it to us, after her second reschedule. I knocked and called and she said she was in tacoma still, which is about an hr away. I just left because she was not the good repeat customer and obviously wasnt taking the appt seriously, plus had already wasted our time twice.


for a good customer I would probably wait because I know how traffic is and my customers usually always wait for me, but also I dont schedule jobs for 5pm... our latest appt is 3 unless its very close to where I live.

If you try and leave somewhere at 4-7 youll basically just sit in hrs of traffic

Im flexible here...but I can walk across town in 30 minutes! lol I would have waited, people just run into things like we do. I rarely have a problem. Ive gained a good tip a time or two being flexible.