I cleaned an apartment for them a couple of weeks ago. She was referred to me by another cleaner who closed up. She beat me up on price then and I gave her a good deal so she could see the job I do and explained I would have to charge a little more in the future, after all the last guy that was cleaning so cheap went out of business and I don't intend to have the same fate.
Fast forward to today. They call and tell me they have two apartments flooded, please come right away. I get there and well let's just say flooded is an understatement. They were both vacant and a pipe burst in the bathroom. Water about a half inch deep throughout one and every wall wet and almost as bad in the other apartment.
I explain to her that I'll go ahead and extract but I'll need to get more equipment to bring back and letting her know she should contact her insurance company because this is going to be a substantial loss (she already knew it was going to fairly large because she was pointing out that she was going to have to replace most of the furniture because of the pressboard swelling and coming apart.)
When I tell my buddy that I get extra equipment from, where I'm at the first that that comes out of his mouth is "they don't pay". I tell him that I explained to the lady that it was going to be in the thousands for this loss and she said go ahead. While I'm on the phone with him the lady's husband walks in and first thing out of his mouth is "how much to just extract?" Of course the guy I'm on the phone with starts laughing. At that point I let the guy know that just extracting is not good enough and I would not do it because the walls are wet and need to be dried, yada yada. I wasn't trying to talk him into letting me dry it, I was just making sure he knew of the dangers, because at that point even if I was able to talk him into it I probably would have had a hell of a time getting paid if I ever did get paid at all.
After I left I called my buddy back and he said a few years ago it was the same situation. They had a flooded apartment and the lady agreed to let him dry it. The husband was out of town when he started drying. When the husband came back he told him to pull the equipment (a day or two into job). My buddy said when he was trying to collect for that job that they acted like they couldn't understand English but when he uttered the words "mechanics lien" they understood that just fine and he recouped some of his money.
Oh well, no skin off my back. I'm sure he'll go through the yellow pages and find someone willing to just extract for a few bucks. They can be his new cleaner as well.
Fast forward to today. They call and tell me they have two apartments flooded, please come right away. I get there and well let's just say flooded is an understatement. They were both vacant and a pipe burst in the bathroom. Water about a half inch deep throughout one and every wall wet and almost as bad in the other apartment.
I explain to her that I'll go ahead and extract but I'll need to get more equipment to bring back and letting her know she should contact her insurance company because this is going to be a substantial loss (she already knew it was going to fairly large because she was pointing out that she was going to have to replace most of the furniture because of the pressboard swelling and coming apart.)
When I tell my buddy that I get extra equipment from, where I'm at the first that that comes out of his mouth is "they don't pay". I tell him that I explained to the lady that it was going to be in the thousands for this loss and she said go ahead. While I'm on the phone with him the lady's husband walks in and first thing out of his mouth is "how much to just extract?" Of course the guy I'm on the phone with starts laughing. At that point I let the guy know that just extracting is not good enough and I would not do it because the walls are wet and need to be dried, yada yada. I wasn't trying to talk him into letting me dry it, I was just making sure he knew of the dangers, because at that point even if I was able to talk him into it I probably would have had a hell of a time getting paid if I ever did get paid at all.
After I left I called my buddy back and he said a few years ago it was the same situation. They had a flooded apartment and the lady agreed to let him dry it. The husband was out of town when he started drying. When the husband came back he told him to pull the equipment (a day or two into job). My buddy said when he was trying to collect for that job that they acted like they couldn't understand English but when he uttered the words "mechanics lien" they understood that just fine and he recouped some of his money.
Oh well, no skin off my back. I'm sure he'll go through the yellow pages and find someone willing to just extract for a few bucks. They can be his new cleaner as well.
