Had some good news over the last week..
We’d tended the gardens here for six years but the property management company – lets call her Nicola – who handles the finances had always been slow to pay us.
Tony is the chairman for the residents and he would always ask if we were being paid on time – why the previous gardeners quit. I know it’s sometimes standard practise for these outfits to pay at 90 days and I’ve always viewed it as money in the bank, but we (Karen and me) are a very small business
Two winters ago we hadn’t been paid in four months, we had numerous phone calls and e-mails with Nicola who just seemed to keep fobbing us off – last summer we saw her on site and she and Karen had quite a showdown, Nicola wanted us to have ‘a good relationship’ – we wanted paying.. and ‘our relations are with the residents’..
Shortly after this we had an e-mail from Nicola asking if, that with our next quote we could please change our accounting period (formerly April – March) to January – December. Then in early January this year Tony said Nicola had found them some new gardeners who were ‘considerably cheaper’ – and that they worked at some of her other sites where everyone was very pleased with them.
We were naturally miffed at being given the push… but they never had given us enough time to get much feeling of job satisfaction. Some people think gardening is easy, and so it should be if you’ve been at it for a while but it does take time, it shouldn’t be a battle. So we consoled ourselves with this.
We know some of the residents socially and they’ve told us they weren’t consulted and that nobody liked the new gardeners. The increase for each of these households would only have been £13.50 this year which is 25p a week. I won’t be shy about it.. when we work at a private house we charge £150 per day each, which is the minimum I think any tradesman will aim to earn
Last week Tony got in touch and we did our first day back yesterday – Tony’s wife reckoned it would take four men a week to get it back to how we left it – it’s not quite that bad — I got big hugs from three ladies so far and we’re back there again tomorrow.. so I’m already late to bed.
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Replies
quality wins.
Congratulations.
Good news. Some of these blocks of flats are run on a very unprofessional basis. There is always someone who knows someone who knows someone who would do it cheaper.
Darren
Great news Pete and Karen:-)) Sounds like common sense prevailed.
Sounds like it would be better for you to deal directly with Tony and his wife in the future and cut out the middle management.
some good news - do they pay monthly now ?!
I'm not sure you didn't get screwed in the end. They fail to pay. You provide deep discounts anyway. They dump you. Then they bring you back and you are supposed to be grateful. I think I would have raised prices on them before agreeing to come back. Oh well, glad you are happy!
Ken Nesland Landscaping
www.kenneslandlandscaping.com
Thanks Darren but we can cope:)
Ken, I think we were screwed in the begining, six years ago - but we wanted to work here and we do apply an 8% increase each year. We used to enjoy the full on running around for private homes in our early days but with the value of money going down fast, earning a decent wage at this job can be tough unless you are particularly astute. So these days we prefer the all day work, and the more gentle ambience of these elderly residential places where our capabilities are better received...
I've found out a bit more about what happened here at the Limes - the gardeners that took over from us in January didn't have much to do at that time, but up until the end of May they were still only working two / three hours once a fortnight, apparently they cut half the grass one visit and then the other half the next, and one time a lady came and did some weeding. We always worked three full days a month at this time of year
Karen's actually pretty cool when she's angry (she can stay calm)... and I can only think that Nicola had determined to get rid of us after that confrontation when we saw her on site - maybe she asked these other gardeners to just do the minimum?... or told them that's all the people at the Limes wanted?
If that really is the case then Nicola, while trying to stitch us up, has also given a lot of grief to this other gardening company and to 33 homes at the Limes, she's also further damaged her own company's (not so good) name. What did she think she was doing I wonder?