Dinosaur

Rosie made a Thing – via The Hippies were Right via Stephanie Youmans Wilson

Just in case you were wondering – my favorite dinosaur is a Stegosaurus, though I’ve never met one personally. :0)

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Since I’m older than dirt, I FEEL like a dinosaur for many reasons –

The one that hits me in the face the most often is that good manners, common courtesy, good communication, and doing what you say you’ll do when you said you would do it have gone the way of the dinosaurs. It saddens me that I’m AMAZED when someone treats me the way I try to treat everyone.

One example of what I consider ‘old world style’ customer service is when we got covers for our gutters recently. I got three prospects for people who would install the covers. One never bothered to call back. Two called and came. One of the companies was really nice, but we couldn’t afford their services. The other was trying to make a ‘one time rush deal,’ so I blew him off. I decided to try to get an estimate for just cleaning out our gutters. I lucked into Edwards Gutter Cleaning in Fort Smith, AR. 

He came out and looked at things. He asked if I would like him to install covers after he got the gutters cleaned out. We talked and I discovered that he did almost anything outside. I asked him if he could saw off the large branch that had broken off a tree at the bottom of our driveway. He gave me an estimate for all of this, coming in at 1/3 the price of the highest estimate. We agreed on a time and the amount of money. He actually gave me a time he would come. When he was delayed, he called me and asked if it were all right if he came an hour later. He discovered while cleaning out the gutters that we already HAD some covers on some of the gutters and that they were still good. We needed covers for the rest and so he revised the cost downward! He worked his head off with his partner, did everything he said he would do, cleaned up, etc.

I thanked him profusely for treating me so well, and that I hoped he would get rich because of working hard, treating his customers like real, valued people, and doing what he said he would do and more. I gave him a really good review on Home Advisor. He actually called me last week to be sure I was still happy with his work, asking if I needed anything now.

In this day and age, this kind of service doesn’t happen. We lucked into his wonderful guy and will definitely call him first when we have something we need done outside.

I still feel like a dinosaur, holding on to what I consider ‘basic courtesy,’ when I’m shown over and over that I’m’ behind the times and things don’t work that way anymore.’