Bill Me! Please!

Have you ever worked with a vendor that doesn't bill in a timely manner? Does that effect your relationship with the company? I sure have and yes it does.

I hired a company last year to perform service to one of my computers. This company, who is a fellow solo business owner, did not provide me a written estimate for the work to be done. This was my first mistake. I will now ALWAYS ask for a written estimate before any work is done, even from someone that I know or have done business with in the past. If I don't get a written estimate, I will not do business with that company or person.

The work was completed within a day and some extras were added (with my approval). I then asked if I should write a check right then, or if I was to be billed. The latter was stated and I waited for the bill to arrive. I waited and waited... I saw this person each week but the bill never came.

Finally, the bill arrived over 3 months after the work was performed. There were several things that I was not made aware of included on the bill. By the way, the bill was emailed as an attachment instead of snail mailed. When sending any kind of attachment, you must always follow up with a phone call or even another email just to make sure the recipient received your document(s).

The bill included a travel charge, that I had not been made aware of and a higher installation fee than I was verbally quoted. I replied by email about the discrepancies and received 2 emails back. One was ANOTHER invoice for a part that was omitted from the original invoice. I was not pleased by this surprise. I don't like surprises and make sure that my customers are not subject to my billing errors or omissions. The subsequent email responses were less than professional and I picked up the phone to state my feelings and clear the air. I stated the facts, that the invoice was extraordinarily late, I was billed for items I was not made aware of and that I was generally frustrated. I also said that this experience would greatly effect my choice to use this service in the future and the loss of my word-of-mouth referrals.

In the end, the response I received left me with an unsatisfactory result. I was refunded the travel fee, but other issues that I brought up were not addressed and/or poor excuses were formed.

I'm a caring person, but I hate lamo excuses. I will think twice before hiring this company again and will certainly abstain from giving referrals based on this.

No matter how good your work is, you have to carry through from start to finish. That means, you need to provide an accurate quote, complete the work in a timely and professional manner, communicate effectively along the way and bill appropriately. If I mess up on a quote, I usually absorb that cost. There's no reason for me to involve my customers in my mistakes. Sometimes it's a hard lesson and I have to pay for that lesson monetarily. I can guarantee that I won't do that again! There is too much value in someone that has used my service to let them have a bad experience. It's up to me to ensure their experience is smooth and satisfactory. Of course, you can't please everyone all the time. But you can do your best all the way through.