My price ain't high, your budget is too low...

A few days ago, a client that I had previously blogged about, dropped me a message asking me when I would be available for a call, since I was still sleeping at 10.30am in the morning when I got the message, I decided to wait till I was fully awake to respond back to him, which was about an hour later when I finally gave him permission to call me for a chat.



When the client requested to talk, I knew for sure it was going to be about the price of the quotation, and I have been in this line long enough to know what the selling price for most of the renovation works should be at, so I wasn't worried about getting "called out" for being too expensive, because I know I did not overcharge them for anything and what I am charging is is actually lower than what my other colleagues will charge their customers.



So the call comes in and the client is very cordial at the beginning, asking me how my weekend was, if it was any good and I was already anticipating this conversation to take a huge turn once the niceties were out of the way, and it went according to how I predicted.




Let's just call this client Patrick.


So once the niceties were out of the way, Patrick starts going through the quotation I have prepared for him with me over the phone, going over the different points he had issues with and just straight up exclaiming that I was selling at a price point that was way too high to be acceptable.


He did his own break down of how much he thinks each item cost and then managed to calculate the total profit my company will earn, and I was quite impressed with his accuracy because he was just a thousand dollar short from the actual cost price.



The conversation went on for quite a while and he was progressively getting more and more aggressive with his tone, it sounded almost confrontational at one point, that I started to wonder if the whole point of this call was just him trying to "call me out" and make me feel guilty for trying to take advantage of him, so I got pretty offended with his accusatory tone and just told him straight...

"If you think my price is too high, I would advise you to hire a contractor instead."

... because I have not been engaged by him yet, there is no obligation for him to engage me if he thinks my pricing is unfair, and I just do not like the way he was speaking to me, it didn't feel like a respectful conversation and I do not want to work with someone who won't show me any respect, I have zero interest to work with someone like this, so I would prefer him to leave me alone, which made my "advise" to him come across as a very valid option. I am not trying to do some sort of reverse psychology and hope he would be scared and then adjust his tone, I just straight up do not want to work with him.

Upon hearing my response, he quickly changes his tone and goes...

"I hope that you understand it is not my intention to offend you. My wife and I like you very much, that is why I am calling you to try and work something out."

.... and then he goes on to use his position as an expat and a Caucasian as an excuse for his "bluntness" , and I honestly don't care if you are a Caucasian or an Expat, that is really not a valid excuse for being unpleasant.

Of course I did not tell him that, but instead told him I will rework the quotation and see if I can lower the price any further, that I will email the new quotation to him by the end of the week. 

The quote has been recalculated and the price is pretty much unchanged, I don't really plan on sending him the updated quotation because if he isn't agreeable with the first one, then this quotation isn't really going to make much difference. I also don't want him to call me again to negotiate further because I did not enjoy the phone conversation with him. If this is the attitude he is going to be giving me before an agreement has been signed, then I can only imagine how much of a nightmare he will become once the renovation starts.

At the end of the day, what I got from his phone call is my service isn't worth the money, simple as that. He calculated a $8000 profit from the project, so if we were to break down the commission based on his calculation, I will earn about $3200, which is honestly the average for a project of his size, and his exact words to describe the profit was...

"It is way too high"

... which really makes me wonder then how much would he be expecting me to earn, a few hundred dollars for 2 to 3 months worth of work?

If he does reach out to me, then I will just send him the quotation, just as a courtesy, but I am not going to allow him to engage me for his renovation works. I have turned down projects before and I am feeling very strongly against Patrick. I shall not let this be a repeat of the J&J fiasco.

Another waste of time...

A few days ago, I got assigned to a client who requested for a pretty last minute consultation session, and initially I wasn't too keen on the idea of meeting a new client because I am just really lazy af, but since no one else in the office was available, I decided to take it and just see how it goes, if the client is nice and we click, then I will follow up, if he or she is a piece of work, then the consultation will be all they get.



My HR then sends over the client's details and when I read through the requirements, it just felt like such a waste of time because the budget the client had set aside was not realistic at all. I have been in this line long enough to know of a rough estimate and running the project at her budget will incur huge losses on my end, but since the appointment has been set and I have been assigned to deal with this, I thought let's just get the consultation over and done with.



So 6 pm rolls around and the client finally arrives, she strolls into the office with her husband and when I saw the husband, I immediately got a bit worried because he was Caucasian, and the last time I spoke to a Caucasian homeowner, that old fart was just really unpleasant to deal with, so I was a little worried that this client's husband might be the same because they also look to be around the same age.



As I introduce myself to the wife, she immediately apologize for being a little late and also requesting for a consultation so last minute, I waved off her apologies and told her it wasn't a problem and she then introduces her husband to me and he was really nothing like that old fart I had to deal with early last year.




We started the consultation and they were a really lovely couple, very pleasant to talk to and it just made me feel better about this potential waste of time because the very first thing I ask the wife was how much she was willing to stretch her budget and she told me...

"$25,000 is the maximum we will go."

.... which is still extremely unrealistic and I really don't like it when a client gives me a maximum figure and that figure is still way too low to do what they are planning to do. So I told her that her budget is simply not realistic and then gave her a much more realistic budget, which was about $40,000.



I told them that I will prepare a quotation based on their requirements and then brought up the budget issue once again to mentally prepare them for the final figure, they both thanked me for my time and I honestly felt really hopeful.



Normally I will ask a client to give me 7 days to prepare a quotation for them, but since I like hopeful about this couple, I told them I will prepare one for them within the next 3 days, and I did. The final figure came up to about $40,000, which was exactly what I had predicted and told them about, so I send that quotation to the wife via email and then drop her a text to let her know that the quote has been send out.




Every time I send a message to a potential client about the emailed quotation, a client I have met, they will respond back with...

"Great, will take a look and revert back to you!"

... and they never revert back because their pants are on fire. From time to time, I would get ingrates some who wouldn't reply, like that "mini celebrity" I met a few weeks ago, I mean I also really wasn't expecting that celebrity to respond back because we did not click at all, but it would have been nice to at least send a courtesy reply back to me, I would have liked her a little more if she did that.



But anyways, I was fully expecting this client to send me a courtesy reply, but she did not, she read my text, it was double blue ticked, but there wasn't any "Thanks for the quotation", just left me hanging.



I am disappointed because in the end, she and her husband did ended up becoming a waste of time.

The inevitability of stepping into shit....

Just came back from work today and was originally suppose to meet a new client.



This client, which I shall just refer to her real name, called Teresa, scheduled an appointment with my admin side for a consultation session with an Interior Designer, and the date and timing was set for today at 2.00pm.



An confirmation email was sent to her and me to confirm the appointment.



I didn't have any showroom duty today, so when I went to the office in the afternoon, my intention was purely to meet Teresa. I went a little early than usual and reach the office at around 12.30pm, had my lunch, chit chat with my colleagues and waited until 2pm for Teresa to come.



2pm came around and Teresa was nowhere to be found, so my colleague started teasing me and told me that Teresa might have decided to ghost me. It was only a few minutes after 2pm, so I was still holding out hope that she might just pop into the office soon and then apologize for being late, and I will be like...

"Oh no worries, come on in."

... but then 10 minutes became 20 and by the 30 minute mark, I decided to text Teresa to ask if she was on her way. She didn't reply, so I told myself if she still isn't here by 3.00pm, then I am just going to leave because making me wait an hour for her without any text message to tell me she is going to be late or stuck in a jam is just plain rude.




At around 2.45pm, I finally get a text from her and she writes...

"I have already engaged another company to do my renovation, so I won't be coming down."

.... thanks for having the decency to send me a response text I guess, but this STUPID CUNT literally made me wait 45 minutes for her and then tells me she won't be coming down because she has already engaged another company, she had zero intention to update my company to cancel the appointment, I had to text her for her to inform me of her decision.



I would fucking spit at her face if I could, the level of entitlement this bitch has.
So my time doesn't matter?
My money for having to travel from my home to the office doesn't matter?



This bitch didn't even bother to apologize in her response, just simply stated that she won't be coming down and it just fucking pissed me off at how nonchalant her response was.



I read her text and I deleted the entire chat without responding to her, she is a customer, so I can't call her out for being an inconsiderate asshole, which is why I did the passive aggressive thing by making sure her message gets double blue ticked and don't respond to her because FUCK YOU TERESA!

Here's hoping you get scammed by the company you engaged.