February 3rd, 2011

on why people PISS ME OFF

It’s probably bad that I’m blogging while pissed off, but I’ve decided this is a better way to vent my frustration than yelling more. So here goes.

When we were home for Christmas, we had a big storm. Concerned that the guy who was taking care of our cats wouldn’t be able to get in our driveway, we called our contractor from last summer and asked if he had a plow guy he could recommend. He did… he called the guy, called us back, let us know it’d be $50 and we said OK.

Fast forward to us coming home. It was plowed, no worries there. We called to see how to pay. Our contractor gave us his number… we called twice, left messages, never heard back. We called our contractor back, he gave us a general idea of where he lived. We finally found the guy in the phone book and sent him a check.

Fast forward to the next storm.. someone plowed. We said, wth? We called our contractor (having NEVER heard from the other guy), and he said, oh he probably just saw it needed to be done. We said, do we have to pay, because we didn’t arrange anything. He said, No.

Fast forward to the next storm.. someone plowed. We said, wth? Whatever. We never heard from the guy – is he really doing this to be nice?

Fast forward to last week, when we decided that we needed to excavate the Chop’s car. We finally got ahold of the guy (shocking) and he said he didn’t do that. We found someone else, and made an agreement with them for that and plowing.

Fast forward to today, when the first guy said he was sending us a bill for $300.

Yeah. I called him back and said, basically, no you aren’t. We never had an agreement, you never called us back, we didn’t want you to plow. Cue 20 minutes of back and forth wherein it was insinuated that I am a) a bad person and b) a bad neighbor. I said I’d pay him what I think is fair – maybe $100 – but definitely not $300. This guy thinks I’m a raging bitch, I’m sure, but frankly, you don’t do something without asking and then charge for it. THAT IS NOT HOW BUSINESS WORKS. I mentioned this multiple times.

Me: If I just did work for you and then sent you a bill, you’d be totally fine with that? Without me saying, hey, I’ll do this and this is how much it costs first?

Him: Yeah, that’s the neighborly thing to do. I just had tshirts made and we agreed on $600 and it was $1200 and I paid it.

Me: YOU HAD AN AGREEMENT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

So, the few people who still look at this thing ’cause I never blog, what would YOU do?

Update: So he dropped off the bill (we hid in the nursery) and looking at it, he charges more for more snow, he only came 7 times and I am more pissed than I was before!

Second Update: We talked to our contractor who said, “Yeah, we’re on the same page… it seems like he’s reading from a totally different book.” As in, yeah, he wasn’t supposed to keep plowing and I don’t know why he did without telling you the fees.