Here's the letter I'll be sending after an uncomfortable phone call I'll be making. Any thoughts appreciated:
Per our conversation today I will not be continuing with your survey.
My initial work on your site revealed that the lot lines that you share with the xxxxxx and yyyyyyy properties have some fairly significant discrepancies. My duty to protect the public in my surveying work requires that I investigate these discrepancies to the fullest of my ability. This includes field surveying, deed research, and very often, discussions with neighboring landowners to gather written or parol evidence sufficient to determine the true location of the lot lines. The resolution of these discrepancies can require significant time in surveying (even the neighboring properties), and in some cases agreements regarding the lines may be necessary between neighboring property owners.
I feel that your questioning my professionalism in speaking with the neighbors during my initial field work will ultimately hinder my investigation, and cause you to doubt any opinion that I might offer as to the lot lines. For that reason, I think that you will be best served by starting fresh with another Surveyor.
I will not be invoicing you for my work to date and I wish you the best of luck with your project.
Short, direct and respectful. Very Professional. She may ask you to continue once she understands that the person with the gold doesn't get to make the rules.
Good call. I've had to cut a few clients lately that didn't understand the meaning of professional behavior.
You have worded that well. You will find out if she's as bad as she wants to make you think. Usually they wake up and realize that a neighbor could hire you and prove her wrong. She sure doesn't want that to happen. At least when you do it for her she has the option of going out and ripping out all the evidence once you leave.
Skip the phone call but state in the letter that she should feel free to call and discus this further if she desires.
jud
One of the first question I have when taking on a survey for a private individual; is there any boundary disputes or boundary issues with the neighbors etc. I also explain that this is the neighbors line as well and that I will be talking with them and to please let them know we are coming . this works well so far .
This also lets me know if I want to tackle the job . I dont like working for petty people .
Seems like when someone buys their subdivision home and lot all others beware, some of the things I have seen or heard, I wonder about humanity .
The one good thing to come from this is that the next project you take on you'll probably explain to the client that it's likely you'll have to confer with the neighboring land owners.
Recognizing that the value of advise correlates to the price paid for it, I offer the following comments/questions/suggestions:
1. You've asked members of this board to validate your approach. No problem, we all like to indulge in "righteous indignation" from time to time. I will not criticize anything you've said or done.
2. What might it take to turn the situation into win-win? Put yourself in the shoes of the person receiving your letter.
3. Your primary challenge appears to be maintaining your professional integrity and I am convinced you are doing that.
4. But, follow the money (future). What are the chances persons on this board will hire you to do a job for them? Might happen, but my guess is geography gets in the way. Here I'm dreaming, but 6 months or a year from now I'd be delighted to learn that you have been able to engage in constructive conversations with all parties and that they are proud of the manner in which you helped solve (some of the obvious) problems. They might not like paying your fee, but most persons are willing to pay a legitimate price for what they preceive as good service.
Best wishes and happy surveying!
And, yes, I need to learn from my own advice!
When I am annoyed like this I find it helps to write the letter or the email.
Lately I am learning to not send them.
I like your wording. I think you already came to the conclusion that you were most likely not going to get paid if there was any conclusion other than what the client wanted you to conclude. Then you would be spending a lot of time trying to collect.
I'm kind of agreeing with what Mr. Burkholder is saying. You might be right in feeling indignant with the way they talked to you, but I would suggest that maybe they just don't understand the nature of your job. I wonder if maybe you could explain what you are doing and why (which you did do) and telling her that if she is uncomfortable with that, that you are willing to step down and let her hire someone else. (All I'm suggesting is that you don't tell her that you think she was questioning your professionalism.)
After that if they are still bent on questioning your professionalism, you might consider billing them for the time you did put in and walk away. If they back off and apologize, you keep working and hopefully you have educated someone a little bit about what you do. Most people think that our work is simple and straight-forward. You just measure a few distances as shown on the deed, and that's the end of it.
I hope you have learned something from this (I know I have) and that it will help you with future clients like this (all potential clients, for that matter).
If your clients know, up front; if there are conflicts that need resolve or hidden problems that need corrected; there will be additional costs involved.
Open communication with everyone involved is essential to a cost saving and equitable resolve. Most people, once they understand this, are quick to seek the best solution and will trust you to make that happen.
I hope you have a great day, I know I will!
Dugger
I agree with jud -- I've found the phone in such cases to be quite unproductive -- the letter will serve you better if anything nasty (legal action, Board complaint, etc.) ensues.
I dont blame you one bit for cutting your losses. Very rarely can you make people like that understand what it takes for us to do our job (let alone the liability we assume).
People like this are the ones that look at there tax map and think we can just stake out the distances or the acreage. You just made money by not having to further deal with this client.
> When I am annoyed like this I find it helps to write the letter or the email.
>
> Lately I am learning to not send them.
I do that quite often.
I have a rule to not say or do anything when something or someone gets me wound up. If I need to walk away and say nothing for 2 days or 2 weeks - fine. Let a cooler head prevail. Seems to work well except for 3 matters that still have me quite upset. Those 3 involve good friends and we remain good friends. They all know I'm still PO'ed after a few years.
Hopefully you didn't have too much $ into this project before you came to this realization. It also appears that your contract must not of adequately addressed a stop work situation like this. You have every right to get compensated for the work that you already performed. Unless of course it's going to cause you pain and anguish to obtain payment.
We have a stop work section of all our contracts that identifies this very situation. This section clearly identifies that we will receive payment for services provided before moving forward with the next task(s). There's more to it than that but that's the short version.
That's my practice when I get in tirade mode. I'm not really angry in this instance, I just don't feel like we're ever going to be a good client/provider match. It didn't help that the folks I spoke with (separately) each sort of rolled their eyes when I explained why I was out there.