Two Sides to a Story | Handyman Near Me

I quite regularly see people using social media to publicly name & shame a company; some people do it for the right reasons, some use the ‘power of social media’ to exact revenge, and some … believe it to be a mythical power that they can hold over any company.

To a certain extent, that’s true.

One negative review can have such a harmful impact on a business, rightly or wrongly, but the one thing I always think of … I learnt as a child that there is always two sides to any story.

Unfortunately, most consumers reading these social media posts forget that. Which is why I’m writing this.

Mr & Mrs Brizzle

I’ve recently had two such customers, for the sake of fairness, I’ve called them Mr & Mrs Brizzle (not their real names).

I’ll admit that things hadn’t gone as smoothly from my end as I’d like, but we’ll get to that (and the generous offer I made them to make up for that fact).

From the off, there were issues that I’d normally consider to be red flags, that I should respectfully make a pass on the work they wanted doing – a 35 minute drive to their house (at a pre-arranged appointment time) was met with silence when I knocked on the door. This meant at least 1 hour and 15 minutes lost (70 minutes driving, 5 minutes knocking). Not the end of the world, but annoying.

Mr Brizzle had to pop to the shops, Mrs Brizzle was in bed.

I re-arranged another appointment with them, which by the time I’d finished there, and driven home again, was another two hours and fifteen minutes from my day. That’s three hours and thirty minutes so far, and I hadn’t even started work for them.

Clutterly Butterly

Second red flag was an abundance of clutter, with little room to work, two dogs (and their mess … I trod in dog mess twice (outside) throughout the course of the job), and a general air of uncleanliness.

To give you an example of the clutter, when I turned up to fit their new tap they had purchased, they couldn’t find it so had to buy another (causing delay and inconvenience). They wanted a new kitchen worktop fitting, new sink & tap. The worktop was solid wood, I offered to make them a solid wood worktop from scratch, because that would work out cheaper than buying one. Whichever way we went, we couldn’t guarantee a colour match, so this was the best option.

I made a solid worktop for them, and got the colour within 90% of the original. It took around six hours to make. (So that’s now 9h 30m).

On arrival, it transpired that the only way to fit this new section of worktop was to completely remove the next section (at a right angle) which incorporated the cooker etc, which would have meant a) a huge increase in the disturbance to them, b) significantly higher labour costs. I figured that I could modify what’s there, and save both time and money for us all.

With that done, I fitted the new sink and tap, re-routed the water and waste pipes to suit and fit a new undercounter top double kitchen unit (purchased by me, with their money). Which of course, I also had to build. Total hours for the day … 6h 30m. Running total now at 16 hours.

‘New’ Doors

Mr Brizzle mentioned that they had some doors in the shed that they wanted to see if they could fit in their hallway – glass panelled doors to let more light through the hall, they’d bought them from a neighbour for a tenner. (Bargain!).

Both doors were too small for the existing aperture, but they could be ‘built up’ with wood to make them fit. They wouldn’t be pretty, but would fit with the overall feel of their house. I explained that again, fresh wood wouldn’t match the colour, and we could try to match (or at least get as close as possible) to the original door colour.

Resizing old doors like this isn’t quite as straightforward as you may think – timber needs to be added to the back (hinge) edge, and top and bottom to make them central in the frame. You also need to remove a strip the length of the hinge edge to remove the cut-out for the hinges.

What this means in reality is that you need to machine the back edge of the door, size up three separate pieces of wood for the back, top, and bottom, fit them, and then resize the door again to make sure it will fit in the frame. It’s quite a technical job. Being fair to Mr & Mrs Brizzle, let’s say three hours per door, although it was longer. We’re now at 22 hours labour.

This is where things (from my side) started going wrong – my elderly mother (82 years old) was living in Coventry, and needing more and more support. The decision was made to move her to South Wales. I needed time off to organise the sale, move, purchase, and fitting of various things in her new home to make it safe, I couldn’t get back to Mr & Mrs Brizzle for some time. They accepted that, to a degree, but time stretched on.

Gesture of Goodwill

To try and make amends, I offered to make them two solid wood cabinet doors (for the new under-sink cabinet I’d already fitted – they had shiny white doors rather than wooden doors) at no cost – no labour, no materials.

This was never part of the original job or agreement, purely a gesture on my part.

Of course they were happy to accept these doors, which I’d estimate the cost to be in the region of £300. (Handmade doors, solid wood construction, bespoke).

Time stretched on, the delay was purely my fault, but I received a message saying that Mrs Brizzle wanted to stop, and for me to refund her some money (from the £500-odd deposit she’d paid for materials only). I happily, and without issue agreed to this, asking her what she felt was a fair price.

Her response was that she actually wanted me to continue working there, providing that we could make a firm date, she was happy with the work, and me, just pissed off with the delays, and my lack of communication. Which was a fair point if I’m truthful.

I was hesitant, I explained once the trust has gone, it’s almost impossible to get back, but she convinced me that we could work it out. So we did.

We arranged a date, I fitted the new doors, without door furniture because they were going to use the old furniture from the existing doors, and this left the potential fitting of some sort of bathroom door (the frame was out by INCHES so needed some thought), and the fitting of the free, bespoke, cabinet doors. I arranged to be back the following week. Fitting the doors took 1h 30m each, so running total is now 25h labour.

Miscommunications

In that timeframe, I had cause to message Mrs Brizzle FOUR times, of which none were replied to. I knew that she was potentially having some family issues due to the health of one of the dogs, so I left it that she should contact me when she’s ready.

*Tumbleweed*

And then at ten to midnight one night, I had quite an abusive message, I replied politely, but made it clear that I wouldn’t respond to any further messages, to which she messaged me again at 12.10, accusing me of various things, and leaving the threat of “I’ll obviously be leaving you a glowing review on Nextdoor”, and that all I’d done is “fit a sink, and hang two doors”.

The Financials

Before starting the job, I took a deposit of just over £500 for materials, which covered a new composite sink in Black (around £165), kitchen cabinet (double, good quality £90), wood £150, and bathroom door (glazed, solid timber, £90) and various plumbing fittings and miscellaneous bits.

I didn’t buy or fit the bathroom door – Mr & Mrs Brizzle changed their mind, and although I did buy the timber for the worktop, we didn’t use all of it. Everything else was purchased.

So, not including the £300 cabinet doors that I have here, I’m at least £750 of time invested in this job, and Mr & Mrs Brizzle haven’t paid one single penny toward this, which I’m actually OK about … I wouldn’t have charged them this (hence the reason why I’m not kicking up a fuss about it either), I would have been happy to write that off and just walk away purely because of how they feel about the job, but of course Mr & Mrs Brizzle are greedy, they believe that I owe them money for materials not used.

And there’s the other side to a social media threat.

I have no doubt that some of you will think that I’ve not been open with the truth, but I have all the emails, and texts back & forth showing the conversations, and I’ll be uploading them when I get a chance.