Mountain of paperwork from national management company

[B&BGaryC]

They gave us one job and it cost us more to clean it than they paid. Had to stretch 300 ft of hose to reach it. Did it, filled out 15 pages of paperwork and got them all the appropriate insurance and liability information. A whole year went by and then they assigned us to do the same job again at a loss. We did it, wowed the customer and got another mountain of paperwork. I asked them what the minimum amount of paperwork was to get paid and never work for them again. They wanted us to stay. I told them the only reason why we bothered doing the work at a loss was we thought we would be rewarded with actual beneficial paying work, and a good amount of it. They increased the invoice amount by $20 and gave us another job to do 3 months later without discussing the payout ahead of time. The job was 8 times larger floor area plus 25 waiting room and office chairs and furniture moving. Did it, wowed the customers, all told, 4.5 hours. Payout was $150.00. A whole $20 more than the last cleaning. Another mountain of paperwork. Again I asked what the minimum amount of paperwork was required to get paid and never have anything to do with them. Got an answer, sent half what they asked for along with an itemized invoice for $650.00, with a $500.00 discount the memo of which read: Discount of services to match insulting payout offered by your company. Discount includes all profit and 50% of operating cost*
* (In layman's terms, that means we are paying you for the privilege of working for you.)
Meanwhile, whenever you don't have your paperwork completed to their satisfaction you get a once weekly email saying urgent attention requested fill out blah blah blah. A few weeks ago the check rolled in for the service we performed. I replied to the email with the subject line: UNSUBSCRIBE

Body of message:
Seriously. It was worth a try working for you but you pay us less than it costs to do it. Not just sometimes. Every time. We are not doing any more work for you. We gave you all the chances you will get. You got two happy customers out of the deal. Good luck finding somebody who can fill our shoes. I have a feeling you will not have happy customers when the cleaning comes due again and you dispatch another crew.

Thanks.

Is that how you should treat an account?
No.
Should I be written up for doing so?
Maybe.
Did it feel really good?
Yes.
Is there any chance I made any difference in their policy pointing out their screwed up policy?
Probably not.
At least I didn't resort to name calling, make demands or threaten to badmouth them to their client base etc.

 

[Hoody]

I would think the owner of your company would be more pissed at you for you allowing the company to do work at a substantial loss. Nothing wrong in firing an account. I'm not sure why you did the job a second time you threw away $1000 between the two times, only grossing 23% of the original total. :shock:

 

[B&BGaryC]

We regularly do our first job at a loss to get a big account. Has paid off very well in the past. I should have gotten the information about last job up front but it was a last minute thing. The work order was mistaken for the once weekly paperwork email.

All told we lost about $300.

 

[Jimmy L]

:shock:

 

[Brian R]

I've done work for a National but I did make sure we made money doing it. Pretty large jobs so overall it worked out pretty well.
Still do there accounts every 6 months or so.

If I was to do the job directly...yes, I would make a killing...but you gotta do whatch gotta do sometimes.

 

[juniorc82]

I will do a encap job for them when I get one. I tell you one time they called me for a flood at one of the movie gallery video rental stores. Because it was emergency response they had no choice but to pay what I wanted so I finally made my cash from them shiteatinggrin

 

[floorguy]

which MMM was it????