Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2025 Poal.co

1.1K

Any fellow contractors here? Looking for some advice.

When I landed this client I had to buy a bluetooth for the first time because he stays on the calls with me for practically the whole service call. We get along (or did) quite well, engage in lots of conversations professionally and personally. However, his thoroughness is becoming a problem. I am unable to arrive on site and figure out the problems on my own without him constantly asking me to check this, check that, take a picture of this, that, talk to the manager for 40 minutes...talk to me for 30....

Typically a service all should not take more than an hour but I can never do it because of him and his thoroughness. He's usually good on time for the job, gives me 2 when it's only an hour with travel for example but the other day things went sideways. Arrive on a job which should only take 20 minutes and it turns into 2. So I invoiced him a batch of jobs for 2 hours and then he says this "these jobs should only be an hour and now I have to put some techs under the microscope, we're losing money on these jobs". His demeanor changed and I started getting defensive. I told him on the phone, no I pleaded "Let me hang up and go fix this, PLEASE" Dammit the frustration. I could be in/out already.

Then the other day I'm doing a survey for him on a large warehouse just completed. I do the telecom stuff and he's asking me to take pictures of all the areas where there isn't any telecom, just high voltage. Makes me drag the site super around with me on speaker phone asking questions about where all the pipes are going. Wants me to verify one end of a TV cable in a pipe is the same cable on the other side of the warehouse 2nd floor ffs. OF COURSE ITS THE SAME CABLE. Frustration building from both of us, I can hear him sighing. I ask "you want me to tone it out?" NO he says. Well wtf??? It's in the mechanical room, goes through the wall to a junction box, into a conduit travelling the length of the warehouse and goes to the 2nd floor! "Ok", he says "Sounds like that must be the same cable". NO fucking shit!

So, the tension is rising between us. I find myself interrupting him, we're both talking over each other. He's a smart guy but he also talks like everyone else is stupid. Including me. I'm just in a position where the more I let him control my service calls, the more he feels he must be in control. So, now when I do my invoices, I itemize all the time it takes to do a 20 minute job. "Manager in conference call" check. "time on phone" check. "time talking to manager' check. He drags out these calls so much then infers I'm taking too long. Speaking of too long, it takes 60 days or more to get paid and every invoice I send has a reminder to pay off outstanding.

What do?

Any fellow contractors here? Looking for some advice. When I landed this client I had to buy a bluetooth for the first time because he stays on the calls with me for practically the whole service call. We get along (or did) quite well, engage in lots of conversations professionally and personally. However, his thoroughness is becoming a problem. I am unable to arrive on site and figure out the problems on my own without him constantly asking me to check this, check that, take a picture of this, that, talk to the manager for 40 minutes...talk to me for 30.... Typically a service all should not take more than an hour but I can never do it because of him and his thoroughness. He's usually good on time for the job, gives me 2 when it's only an hour with travel for example but the other day things went sideways. Arrive on a job which should only take 20 minutes and it turns into 2. So I invoiced him a batch of jobs for 2 hours and then he says this "these jobs should only be an hour and now I have to put some techs under the microscope, we're losing money on these jobs". His demeanor changed and I started getting defensive. I told him on the phone, no I pleaded "Let me hang up and go fix this, PLEASE" Dammit the frustration. I could be in/out already. Then the other day I'm doing a survey for him on a large warehouse just completed. I do the telecom stuff and he's asking me to take pictures of all the areas where there isn't any telecom, just high voltage. Makes me drag the site super around with me on speaker phone asking questions about where all the pipes are going. Wants me to verify one end of a TV cable in a pipe is the same cable on the other side of the warehouse 2nd floor ffs. OF COURSE ITS THE SAME CABLE. Frustration building from both of us, I can hear him sighing. I ask "you want me to tone it out?" NO he says. Well wtf??? It's in the mechanical room, goes through the wall to a junction box, into a conduit travelling the length of the warehouse and goes to the 2nd floor! "Ok", he says "Sounds like that must be the same cable". NO fucking shit! So, the tension is rising between us. I find myself interrupting him, we're both talking over each other. He's a smart guy but he also talks like everyone else is stupid. Including me. I'm just in a position where the more I let him control my service calls, the more he feels he must be in control. So, now when I do my invoices, I itemize all the time it takes to do a 20 minute job. "Manager in conference call" check. "time on phone" check. "time talking to manager' check. He drags out these calls so much then infers I'm taking too long. Speaking of too long, it takes 60 days or more to get paid and every invoice I send has a reminder to pay off outstanding. What do?

(post is archived)

You are currently inside a comment thread.
Click here to see all the comments (38).
[–] • 5 pts

I just passed the 5 year mark in owning my own construction related business. I've learned the key to dealing with this type of situation and about 99% of other issues is to charge more.....like a lot more. I started upping my prices to deal with problem customers or anyone with a hint of attitude and none of them blinked. Then I realized I should raise my prices across the board. Guess what? None of the nice customers blinked either. This year I've raised prices about 30-40% over last years pricing. Labor and material increases have accounted for half of the raise, but the other 15-20% is just profit in my pocket. A weird thing happened. After about 10 weeks of higher prices, I now have the longest backlog of projects ever. We are probably about 3 months out on starting new jobs and I have deposits on 40-50 jobs waiting to be done. My business is booming despite me raising my pricing higher.

Now comes the best part about that. Since I'm making record margins and have an all time high backlog, I can raise the prices on the problem customers even higher. If they want to pay my high rates, I'll deal with their shit. I'll make like 3x normal profit and that is worth the frustration. If they don't want to pay the high rates, I still win. A shitty customer goes to my competition and they have to deal with them.

Just document everything and make them pay for all of your time. Explain to them that yes this job should take 1 hour, but if you choose to talk to me for 30 minutes and force me to spend another 20 minutes on the phone that isn't required for me to do the work, you are going to pay for it. He doesn't work for free and shouldn't expect you to either.

[–] • 0 pt

My colleague and competitor just upped his rate from 65 to 85 just for having to wear a mask in people's homes. He literally pulls estimates out of the air based on quote "how much money do I want to make today". No shit. He's not even licensed nor certified but he gets the work. More work than me. I charge 55 and I've got all the papers and can pull permits. Been kicking this can for a decade trying to scratch out a living and he seems to fly right along. Even his google listing is on the 1st page whilst mine can't even be found even though its older. Meh, maybe I'll just buy a fishing boat and get out of the biz. Dealing with clients is the worst part about this gig.

[–] • 1 pt

Sounds like the perfect time for you to raise your pricing then. Just give it a shot and see how it goes. If he is at 85 an hour, there is little risk in you raising your rate to $75/$80/$85 an hour. Lots of people value quality work and they equate price with quality.....think of Walmart vs Target. Millions of people shop at target and pay more to do so because they view it as higher quality than Walmart. In reality, 95% of what each sells is the same.

As for your google search problem, that is where a lot of his success is coming from. The best way to overcome that is to A) run some cheap ads on Google Adwords. I spend about $150/month on Adwords and I'd guestimate that alone turns into 10-15 projects a month depending on time of year. My avg projects are about $5-6K each so paying $10-15 dollars each to acquire an extra 10-15 projects monthly is a no brainer. The other way B) is to pay someone to spruce up your website and optimize its google positioning with some SEO. You can probably spend like $500-$1000 one time to drastically move up in the search engine results.

Don't give up though. Just make minor adjustments each week until you fine tune everything and in time you'll find you are making what you are worth....and maybe much more.

[–] • 0 pt

Yeah that can be tough, lol, Reminds me when i first started out of high school i was told only half in jest when pricing for small jobs - "Work out how much drinking money you need for the weekend add 50% then double it ! " ....