Imagine owning your own business, and a new customer calls you when you’re still in bed. You probably wouldn’t mind if they brought you good business, but if they ended up being a very difficult customer to deal with, would you keep jumping through hoops to keep their business, or would you stop taking their calls?

In this story, one man is in this exact situation, and he eventually stops taking the customer’s calls. Keep reading to see what the customer did to end their business relationship.

They need me more than I need them: a tale of (not-so-‘retail’) satisfaction.

Over the last few years, I’ve built a reputation in my city for being one of only a very small handful of people who can reliably perform installation, repair and maintenance of a very specific type of landscaping and pest control equipment, most commonly installed into the bed of a truck.

Anyway, I only know of two other shops that can handle both the volume of work and/or the more highly-specialized aspects of the work that I can, and both of those shops suck.

One of them has one employee and it takes weeks, if not months, to get trucks out and the other shop is mobile and tries not to handle a lot of the business I see most often.

So, more times than not, I end up with trucks from all over the city simply because I can get the work done more correctly and more quickly than the alternatives.

The story starts with an early morning phone call.

Such is the case with the subject of my tale today.

I met the manager for this company (this particular company being rather small compared to most of my fleet customers) when he was frustrated at how long another shop was taking on what turned out to be a rather simple problem.

I got a call EARLY one morning (about 7:45am, I usually don’t even get out of bed until 8:30) on my personal cell phone. I was told this guy got my number from another customer of mine with high recommendations and expectations.

“No problem”, I told him, “I’ll stop by and pick your truck up on my way to work”.

He talked to the customer again.

So, a couple of hours later, I arrive at my office with my new customer’s truck in tow.

I sit down at my desk and I’ve already missed a few calls from this customer. So, I call him back.

He’s concerned about a small fluid leak in a pump housing and he wants that taken care of. We already discussed this while I was still in PJs, but whatever.

No problem, happy to help.

The customer refuses to be convinced to have any extra work done.

In the course of repairs to the pump housing, my technician notices there are some ruptured diaphragms in the rotating assembly of the pump itself. (These are required to both move product and build enough pressure for the work required.)

Leaving the pump as-is will result in both wildly fluctuating output pressures as-well-as a less than ideal volume of product flow.

However, the customer told me that he’d rather me just fix what he told me to fix and nothing else. He makes it very clear that he doesn’t want any upsell, even if it means he can’t perform his job adequately.

Fine, no problem.

He became a repeat customer.

Then he started complaining about how long it’s taken me to fix the problem (it’s only been in my shop for an hour at this point) and he told me that he “couldn’t afford any downtime”.

So, I fixed what he wanted and he was reasonably happy, though he scoffed at my price.

For the next month or so, he brought me more and more trucks, each of them more or less the same. They all suffered from lack of any kind of maintenance, they were all severely unsafe (from no brakes to no windshield wipers to rolling fire hazards from incorrectly installed pumps/motors) and they ALL needed to be fixed two weeks before I ever got my hands on them.

The early morning phone calls continued.

Despite repeated requests to the contrary, I was woken up on an almost daily basis by earlier-than-sunrise phone calls (some as early as 6:30am) and always put on an unreasonable timeframe.

Despite the fact that I was getting jobs out more quickly (and repairing them better), I was constantly chided for the speed at which I got things done.

This culminated, as I said, about a month after I first started doing business with this company.

Lo and behold, the same truck I very first worked on for them shows up.

Again, it’s urgent.

What’s the problem? “Inconsistent pressure” and “low product flow”. No kidding, right?

Anyway, he tells me (almost word-for-word) that he “needs this truck out before 9am tomorrow morning”, as he’s already scheduled this truck for 10 ‘runs’ (or jobs) that morning.

It’s 5:45pm. I work from 9am-6pm M-F.

I tell him that’s not going to happen, but I would do my best to get it out by about 11am.

He begrudgingly agrees.

He went above and beyond for this customer.

So, that night, I went to pick up his truck. I paid my technician overtime to stay at the shop and tear the pump down, just to make sure we had the parts in stock so that we could get it done FIRST THING in the morning for this customer.

Neither of us left work until about 8pm that night.

The next morning, at about 9:30am, I get a call while on my way into the office. The customer pulled their truck. Meaning he decided he’d rather not have me fix the truck.

I called him and asked why.

Here’s how the conversation went…

I was told that “I needed that truck this morning, you were taking too long to fix it.”

Well, sorry, but I told you 11am.

“Well, it was an emergency. My tech didn’t have a vehicle to drive this morning.”

“I’m sorry, maybe you should schedule your techs and their runs better? If nothing else, you took a truck that was in pieces – it isn’t going to do you any good today. Maybe I can offer you some help as a consultant? I’ve worked with other, larger companies than yours to solve similar problems.”

Then, the kicker – “What do you mean ‘problems’? We wouldn’t even have this problem IF YOU HAD FIXED THIS TRUCK PROPERLY THE FIRST TIME!”

He told the customer how he really felt.

Well, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“Sir, if that’s how you feel, then I no longer wish to continue to do business with you. I told you when that truck came in that it had problems and you refused to let me fix it. You and I both agreed that the correct way to fix it wouldn’t be finished until 11am. I can not do business this way. Maybe you could try instead?”

“WHAT?! HOW DARE YOU! I NEED THIS TRUCK FIXED!”

“Well, then you shouldn’t have pulled it out of my bay after allowing me to spend money on my tech’s overtime while trying to meet your demands. I’m not going to continue to bend over backwards and give you priority over other customers just because you aren’t a competent enough manager to schedule your techs in a way that lets your equipment get fixed properly.”

He didn’t back down.

“BUT I WAS PLANNING ON BRINGING IT TO YOU TOMORROW (Saturday). I NEEDED IT THIS MORNING, WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?!”

“I don’t know, but pulling it out from under my feet before I even get to work wasn’t it. Again, try , maybe they’re better at this than me?”

“BUT I WAS GOING TO SEND YOU ALL OF MY TRUCKS!!!”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t think this business relationship is going to be economically viable. There’s no way I could charge you enough to make it worth your headache.”

The customer hasn’t stopped calling.

Anyway, to cut an already-long story short, he was livid – but not as mad or determined as I was.

I knew nobody else could take care of him as well as I did, but I also know that I don’t need his business to stay afloat.

So far it’s been three days. I’ve missed fifteen calls and five voicemails, but I’ve deleted every one of them.

I hope his truck never gets fixed.

Some customers really aren’t worth the headache.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Another mechanic found the story hilarious!

Probably not worth it.

This person thinks he did the right thing.

This is a good point!

That customer really messed up!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.