I hate having to say no. I felt so bad telling the dishwasher guy that he had the wrong dishwasher and I found myself apologizing repeatedly. Yes. I apologized repeatedly for the guy bringing the wrong dishwasher to my house after exactly three months of waiting for an item that was supposed to have been delivered and installed within 7 business days of placing the order. What's even sadder than that is -- the dishwasher guy never apologized even once.
As a matter of fact, when I explained to the guy that I was pretty disappointed because we have been waiting on this thing since September -- he had the audacity to stand in my kitchen and tell me that he remembers it being up for delivery before and no one was home or something... And also that he tried calling to schedule it for installation one time before but no one answered the phone... Of course I'm the one who is always home because I don't have a car... And I'm the one who spent those scheduled delivery dates looking out the window waiting for someone to show up with my dishwasher. And I'm the one who just mentioned to Dave this morning that whoever this installer guy is - I figured out his pattern.. He will call early in the morning and let it ring once then hang up... I got wise to him and started calling the number back off caller I.D. He did it again this morning. I recognized the number as soon as the phone rang, picked up immediately on half a ring and said "Hello? Hello?" and no one was there. So I handed the phone to Dave and said "call this number back -- it's the installer." Right. And this guy stands in my kitchen and says "I told Sears I tried to call but no one ever answered...."
He shows up at my house in a little teeny tiny truck with two dishwashers in the back. One of them was item 002219733000 -- not mine. The other, he tells me, was for a couple of 'old people' -- he went to their house and knocked on their door but they didn't come to the door. He knew they were inside - he could hear them talking. He said they had a big picture window - and they should have seen his truck parked outside. Afterall, after he knocked he went back out to his truck for several minutes to write up the ticket and say they were not home. He was irritated that they had the nerve to call his boss and say they had been home all day... and now he had to go back and deliver it.
Sigh. So here I am listening to this guy with all his nerve... And I see the mystery of where this dishwasher has been for the last three months dissolving rapidly... But I don't say anything to the guy. I just smile and nod and apologize for the trouble he has gone through in bringing me the wrong dishwasher.
A little while later - our roofing company sales lady came by to 'settle up' on the work done on the roof so far and I was set to pay her the full amount on the estimate/agreement since she hadn't given me a figure to make the check out for. Finally, I got up the nerve to mention that $595 of the agreement was for repair/replacement of the fascia and that had not been done. "That's right - that's a different crew..." It was an awkward moment while I tried to figure out how to be forceful and polite at the same time and explain that I wasn't going to pay for work that wasn't done yet. She took the hint though and very nicely gave me the figure for the roof work alone. I was simply lucky that Doris is a nice lady.
Hurricanes are extra devastating to people like us. We're shy on the phone.. We hate asking for things twice. We have the tendency to take people at their word. We have the word 'sucker' written on our foreheads.
Our first experience after the hurricane was with the Carpet Steamer guy whom we hired to remove our moldy sheetrock and insulation and dehumidify our house. He seemed like a nice guy... and we genuinely liked him... We even continued to like him after we found out that we paid $8000 for a service that should have cost us $3500 at the most. We gave him the benefit of the doubt -- maybe that's how much they normally charge where he comes from and he really did think he gave us a great deal. (Our attitude did change somewhat when we stumbled across the article published in the Muskegon Chronicle where they same guy claimed to have done all the work down here at no charge...) At least we got burned early on.. and we've been much more reluctant to hire people without a LOT of research now. Now we just smile politely when someone gives us an utterly outrageous estimate for repairs... "Oh no you can't just replace your missing shingles.. you need a new roof.. that'll run you about $40,000..." If we put together just the estimates for hanging and taping drywall, spraying on texture, and painting most (not all) of the downstairs, it would come to about $27,000. Imagine looking at those figures and realizing that there would still be no baseboards, window or door trim, interior doors, or finished flooring -- let alone anything to furnish it with. ("Putting that trim back will run you about $5000." "Oh I think these are all custom doors -- just those three are going to cost you $2000 - $3000 in material alone.")
We still managed to find ourselves in one of those awkward positions a couple of months ago though, when my husband called the local garage door specialists to ask if they could send anyone out to try to repair our garage door opener. The lady on the phone said if it flooded that it would probably have to be replaced. My husband said he wasn't ready to replace it and just wanted to know if it would be possible to repair it or maybe replace the sensors alone. A couple days later a repairman showed up and proceded to replace our entire garage door opener with a brand new one. My husband came home and awkwardly explained that we did not ask for them to replace our garage door opener, but the man showed him his work order which clearly stated nothing other than 'replace garage door opener.' Of course we felt bad for this guy wasting his time doing all of this work and though we felt we should tell him to remove it and replace it with our old one immediately -- neither of us wanted a confrontation so we agreed to call his employer in the morning. The lady on the phone the next morning was anything but pleasant, but Dave still tried to give her the benefit of the doubt -- perhaps she simply misunderstood. He explained his position and that we were not ready to replace the opener and had not planned to spend the $350 dollars it cost at the time. However, he understood how busy they must be and asked only that they at least allow us to pay for the work that we did not order in the first place in installments. She said no. We managed enough backbone to at least make sure they didn't get their money until the 29th day.
If we can't even handle a garage door specialist I seriously doubt we're going to be anywhere near the top of the FEMA/Insurance food chain.
2 comments:
I'm glad I'm not the only target for people like this. Although I am not a Katrina victim. I'm an elderly person who lives near the water in a house my grandfather bought years ago when it was very inexpensive. Repair people show up and you can see their eyes light up in dollar signs because of the location. I got taken for several thousand dollars once, now I am incredibly vigilant.
That's it exactly, trudy! Exactly. My parents always had this problem when they lived at their house on the lake too!
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