Such Entitlement

Recently, I came across a customer who was on a really tight budget but wanted to do a full home renovation, normally when I meet customers who have a lot of crazy ideas but are not willing to fork out the money to execute those ideas, I just don't have the patience to deal with them, but this client was a little different because she was really facing financial difficulties, after calling me to tell me her sob story, I was genuinely interested in helping her as much as possible.




We scheduled an appointment and she was suppose to come down over the past weekend to discuss with me her requirements and I wanted to advise her on what she can do to reduce her renovation cost.



On the day of the appointment, just a few hours before the scheduled time, she drops me a text that writes...

"Can you quote me based on this requirements?"

... with that text are 2 images of another quotation she had gotten from another Interior Design firm with all the specific measurements stated in it and she had covered the price that Design Firm quoted her with a piece of paper.




I fucking hate it when customers come to me and ask me to give them a quotation figure based on another Interior Designer's quote. If you want to compare the fucking quotes, don't make it so blatantly obvious, it just makes you come across as a cheapskate.




Needless to say, the final figure I had begrudgingly calculated for her was higher than the mysterious Interior Design firm she had found, so I asked her...

"Will you still be interested in coming down later for our scheduled appointment?"

 ...I knew she was no longer interested but I just wanted a confirmation that she was no longer going to come down, but instead of giving me a straight answer, she  replies...

"Do you offer all the accessories? This other Interior Design firm offers all the accessories in the package."

...Yes, I do throw in freebies if my profit is able to bear the cost of it and if I really want to run the customer's project, but for a project that will only earn me less than $1000 in commission, no way in hell am I going to give you free shit and after blatantly pulling that quote comparison bullshit on me, I am going to need you to fuck off.

So she stops responding to me after I told her to fuck off in the nicest way possible. Don't try and goad me into giving you free shit, if I think you are worth the time, then I will give you freebies, if not, go look for that cheaper Interior Designer you have found and have him or her do your home for you.

----

Another customer lead I had recently gotten from my company is really starting to get on my nerves.



After closing 3 deals with 3 different clients over the past month, the last thing I really want is to be bombarded with more customer leads to deal with because that means in 2 months time, I am going to be running 3 different projects simultaneously, the last thing I need is to entertain more individuals who will most probably be out to waste my time.




The last customer I got from my company is some guy who is looking to do renovation for his little 3 room flat, with only a budget of $10,000, he has requested for quite a few items that are clearly going to go over his budget, not by much, but definitely not enough to cover all his requirements.




When I see a customer listing out a shit load of renovation requirements in the email, I know for sure they are only out to compare quotes with other Interior Design firms and I really have no interest in dealing with this time wasters.




He begins the email with his "Remarks" and he starts to list all his requirements down, starting with his living room and ending with his kitchen area. What I find fascinating is that despite having a relatively low budget, he is requesting for quite a few items that are clearly meant for individuals with a higher budget, such as choosing a specific quartz top that is double the price of a regular quartz top. That is like someone with a $50 shopping budget walking into a Louis Vuitton shop and expecting to leave with one of the designer handbags, I mean come'on, manage your fucking expectations a little bit.




And after he is done sharing his renovation requirements, he starts listing out a bunch of questions asking about the renovation timeline, how responsive we are to answering his queries, how our Interior Design firm is different from the other Interior Design firms, how much money he will be able to save if he goes to a Furniture Shop recommended by us, like this is some sort of fucking Q&A session.




Since I really wasn't interested to deal with him, I didn't respond to his email straight away and instead chose to focus my attention on my pool of customers who have already signed up with me, my clients have already paid the company for my services, this joker who is asking me a shit tone of questions through his email on the other hand isn't, so I mean this is pretty much a no brainer on who should be prioritized.





3 days after I received his email, and about 4 hours ago, I decided to finally get to responding back, I didn't want to send him a Whatsapp message because I just didn't want to deal with him. I started the email apologizing to him for not getting back to him sooner, did a very rough calculation of the items he has requested, answered all his stupid fucking questions, and then send the wall of text to him, thinking, hoping that that would be the last I will ever hear of him....




I was wrong




.... he replies back to me 4 hours later and starts listing out certain issues he had with my email response, which begins with...



"Hi, I am very concerned when I read your email, so were you unable to get back to me because you couldn't reach me or were you unable to get back to me due to your busy schedule? So far, the only person who has been getting back to me is your HR Personnel and this is already starting off on a wrong foot." 



Our admin has only contacted you once, so please don't make it sound like she has been in constant contact with you, and I have no idea what "wrong footing" he is talking about. I responded to him 3 days after I got his enquiries, not 3 weeks later, not 3 months later, it's 3 days later.


How is this something to even get upset about? I was busy because I have 3 confirmed projects on my hands to deal with, so would you rather I put those projects aside and prioritize your fucking enquiries? How would you feel if I told you I was going to prioritize a group of non-paying customer over a group of paying customers? Makes no fucking sense does it? They have paid, so they get priority, you are only here for a free service, so you don't get priority, simple as that.




"I have noticed that your charges are different from the other Interior Designers we have spoken to, their feature wall and branded quartz-top are included in their package."




So going by his logic, if I see Gong Cha is having a buy 1 get 1 free promotion, then I can go to KOI and expect to get the same offer as well? Hello! Different companies will have different promotions you moron.




"I am perplexed by the price difference of the items you have quoted when compared to the other Interior Design firms."



So a little bit of fun fact, did you know that not only do companies have different promotions, they also have varying prices. WOW, MIND IS SO FUCKING BLOWN BY THIS COMMON SENSE.




I mean for fuck sake, it was only 3 days, how fucking impatient are you. And he isn't even going to get the fucking keys to his flat until 6 months later.





This is how fucking entitled customers are nowadays, especially this fucking free loaders who are only out to get a free quote so they can compare it with the other quotes they have gotten from other Interior Designers, I mean he has admitted through his email that he has looked for other interior designers and his aim is to compare the quotes. If you don't even have the basic courtesy to drop by our Showroom and actually meet us in person, then don't expect us to show you the same level of courtesy like an instant response, simple as that, this is a free service, you are not paying for anything, you don't stand to lose anything from getting a quote that isn't to your satisfaction, if you are unhappy with the quote I have given you and think it has exceeded your budget, mark me off your list and move on to the hundred other Interior Design firms you have already mass emailed your renovation requirements to.




Such a huge fucking pain in the ass. I actually went to google his email and I managed to find his Facebook Profile, so now I actually know how this guy looks like.




I tried to respond to his email earlier but I just couldn't do it without the message coming across as aggressive because it's really aggravating. I think I might actually lose my shit if I see him leaving a bad review about me on my company's Facebook page.



Update:


After ranting about this situation to my colleagues at work, the general consensus from everyone is to just not give a fuck about the customer anymore, so I'm not going to email him a response and clarify all his concerns, just fuck off.


I've also come to learn that this customer leads provided by the different Interior Design websites actually cost roughly $40 each. This horrible customer lead actually cost the company $40, what the actual fuck?

I don't wanna give a fuck....

I was clearing out my old client list a few days ago and it is really quite amazing how many clients I have actually been given.



Over the course of 3 months, the company has given my a total of 17 clients, excluding those who made an appointment and decided to flake on me without prior notice. I have been holding on to 17 different client's information in my file, so I decided it was time to remove those who were obviously no longer going to contact me ever again. Aggravating thing is with a lot of this clients, I have never even met them in person before because all they want is a free quotation.



My belief is this, if you are going to come to me and expect me to throw in a low figure right from the beginning, then I also do not want to deal with you as a customer. If you are not willing to fork out money to hire an Interior Designer from a trusted Interior Design firm, then by all means, go risk that $10,000 budget you have set aside with some shady Interior Designer.




Ironic how all this same cheapskates then start going to Interior Design forums to vent their frustrations about how the Interior Designer they have found is providing bad workmanship, how they are getting bombarded with a shit load of extra hidden cost or how their Interior Designer has ran away with their money, never to be contactable again.




You get what you paid for, simple as that.

So out of the 17 client's I have, only a few showed potential, and those few only amounted to roughly 3 different clients whom I have spoken to recently, if the client is someone I haven't spoken to in 2 weeks, then they are gonna get thrown out of my file, gotta save up file space for clients who actually matter.




Well, after clearing out almost everyone in the file and leaving those I view as potential clients, all of a sudden, one of my client whom I have stopped speaking to for a few weeks suddenly drops me a message, asking me if he could schedule a second appointment with me. At this point I have already cleared all his messages from my phone, so even though I remembered him, I couldn't remember his name. It took me probably 2 minutes of rummaging through my company email to finally get his information and when I replied and agreed to his request, I realized I might have thrown his information out during my client purge.

---

Just yesterday, I had the "privilege" of serving a pair of walk-in customers, a husband and wife, while I was having my dinner at 7.30 pm, our Showroom closes at 8.30 pm, so I wasn't exactly in the mood for a consultation session with a client an hour before our shop closes.



As they entered the Showroom, I just looked at them from afar, hoping they would be follow up customers of another designer, that way, I didn't have to go and entertain them and can instead finish up my dinner and prepare to head home in an hour, but they just kept wondering about at the Entrance area, so I had no choice but to end my dinner prematurely and went up to them begrudgingly to serve them.



The moment I spoke to them, I was expecting for the consultation session to be a relatively quick one, preferably one that could end within 30 minutes, since they only wanted to take a look at the renovation packages we were offering, so I ushered them in and attempted to run through the package with them as quickly as possible.



As I was about to go through the items in the package, the wife reaches out and decides to take the renovation package pamphlet from me and starts going through it on her own, she also wanted the consultation to end quickly because she was aware we were closing in an hour and didn't want to take up too much of my time, so we spoke and spoke and spoke and spoke and suddenly she looks at her watch and goes...

"Oh no, I need to pick up my kid from Tuition soon. He ends at 9.00 pm."

... I was elated when I heard that because it was already past 8.30 pm and I wanted to go home, but then she looks to her husband and says to him...

"Can you go pick him up and bring him over?"

.... Why can't you go with him and let me go home?

I continued the consultation session with the wife while the husband went to pick their son up from the tuition center, only arriving back at around 9.30 pm. We were still nowhere near done because when he came back with his kid, he started sharing his vision of how he wanted his home to look like, it was so confusing even the wife couldn't catch what he was saying, so I had no choice but to bring my laptop over and attempt to do a quick 3D for him so all of us can get his drift.... his drift was quite ugly.

There were a lot of components in his vision that just made me want to go...

... because it just makes no sense?

He wanted to created a feature wall, but he also wanted the feature wall to have an L-Shaped extrusion on the side, and when I asked him why he wanted that, he told me it was because it gave the whole wall a balanced look.

This is an L-Shaped Structural beam in a HDB flat, normally, homeowners would fork out money to even out the recess area created by the beam so they can have a flushed surface to work with. 

This customer's home right now does not have that L-Shaped structural beam on his wall, in fact, he has a completely flat wall to work with, but for some weird reason, he is requesting his feature wall to be in the shape of that L-Shaped Structural beam.

I asked him if he wanted to do an L-Shaped storage cabinet instead and give that weird protrusion a function, but he rejects my idea because all he wanted was to have an L-Shaped extrusion as it creates a more "balanced" look, at one point, even the wife started question his taste and kept asking him...

"How is that nice?"

"Why do you want to put that there? It doesn't make any sense?"

... it really makes no sense to me at all.

My goal was to give them a quote on the spot, but after hearing all these weird ass designs from both the husband and wife, because the wife also had her fair share of really weird design ideas, I just couldn't. I kept telling them I had to ask the carpenter first and they kept talking about how they were going to compare my price with another Interior Designer they had sought prior to me. Upon hearing that, I knew for sure I was going to lose to the other Interior Designer in terms of pricing, which also made me not want to actually do their quotation for them anymore.

To give a fuck, or not to give a fuck, that is the question.

I have gone ahead and asked my carpenter about the price this morning and he told me he will give me an answer at night, it's already 11 pm and I still haven't gotten an answer from him yet. I kinda feel a bit bad bombarding him with all the costing questions because I know for sure the customer is never going to pick me as their Interior Designer, so I am sort of wasting the Carpenter's time by making him calculate the costing for me.

Can go lower.

Decided to do a reinstall of Windows 10 this evening after my WiFi kept disconnecting literally every 15 minutes over the past week, which was an extremely infuriating experience to go through.



Downside was that I had to reinstall all my editing software, but that trouble was a small price to pay for getting rid of that inconsistent internet connection.




Work has been the same, I have been receiving a steady stream of customer leads from my company and a lot of them are only in for the free quotes, so nowadays, instead of doing up a proper quotation for them, I will just drop them a text with the renovation package attached and hope they just fuck off and stop wasting my time.




About 2 months ago, one of my friend contacted me asking about renovation services my company was offering, he just got a new flat and was looking to have some renovation works done, unfortunately, he was a little tight on budget so I knew he was not going to be able to afford my services, but I decided to just prepare a quotation for him to take a look at first and give him a rough estimate of how much his renovation will actually cost. Naturally, he got a bit surprised at how much higher my final figure was compared to his budget as well as the quote given to him by the other Interior Design firms he had sought out, so after a little back and forth, we both came to the conclusion that I was not the right person for his project.




I didn't really get back to him after our last exchange and assumed he had already picked an Interior Designer to work with, I thought that will be the last time he will be asking me about his home renovation project, until this morning when he got back to me to ask about some costing related questions, asking me if his Interior Designer was offering him a good price on some carpentry works and if he was being cheated etc.




He wasn't, in fact, when I saw the price I felt like the one who was being cheated was the Interior Designer, for taking up the project because there is almost no profit margin.




I gave my friend a rough estimate of how much I would charge him for certain carpentry items to give him a price comparison, as well as to assure him that he was really getting a very good deal from his Interior Designer, but instead of going...

"Wow, my Interior Designer is really doing me a huge favor by charging me so little!"

 ... he goes...

"Wah, why your one so expensive? It's just a piece of wood."

... because Interior Designers all just travel to the nearest Art Friend, get a few plywood from there, throw it into a new home with some hammers and nails, recite an incantation, wait for a few weeks and BAM, your home is done.

Sigh.... such ignorance. 

It really is quite worrying for me though, to realize that out there, there are actually Interior Designers who would earn close to nothing, just to get a project to run, although to be fair, his Interior Designer he found is actually someone he knows personally, so there is that reason, I'm not super close to him, that's why I'm not willing to run his project for him for "free".

I was recently on an Interior Design forum and one user was asking the community for some feedback about the quote his Interior Designer had given to him. As someone who has been doing renovation quotes regularly for the past 3 months, I am pretty familiar with how much certain items will have to be sold at,  and when I took a look at the quotation the user shared, I realize that it was actually quite low, or lower than my price, there will still be some profit made from the project, but not much,  and really, the user really has nothing to worry about, but then the first response to that thread was...

"Hmmm, price a bit steep, can go lower."

....Go lower? The Interior Designer is already barely making any profit from the project and you say can go lower.  Hello? You think the Interior Designer can survive off a generous heart?

Every time I go to that forum, I just get really riled up by the level of ignorance a handful of the forum users there exhibit.  You don't look at an Interior Designer's quote and compare it to a Contractor's quote, that's not how it works, so no, the quote shouldn't go any lower.



That's like me walking up to a random office worker who is barely making ends meet and telling the people around him...

"I think his salary is too high, can go lower."

... I get that customers will want to get the best price possible, but please, at least spare a thought for the poor Interior Designers who are barely making any money.