I'm pretty sure that this one sets a record for me. A gal from a mortgage company calls this afternoon. She needs a copy of a map of a survey that I made for our "mutual client", by which she meant her mortgage customer. "Tell me a bit about the property," I said. Well, she didn't have a legal description, so I asked who her client was. Yes, that name rang a bell from the distant past and I rattled off the name of the subdivision in which it was located.
It was a survey of a residential property, of which I've done relatively few. This was one from fifteen years ago, a newly constructed house on a lot in a subdivision that I'd laid out just a year or so earlier. What in particular highlighted that one in recollection was that it was one of only a handful of projects in 25 years of practice that I didn't get paid for.
The client had a good excuse, though. He called to tell me that he'd been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease just about the same time the closing was supposed to take place. He may have asked if I minded waiting to get paid, since he had applied for disability retirement and there would be a time lag in getting that going. Since my understanding of that disease at the time was that few people lived more than a few years after being diagnosed with it and since the invoice was probably for less than $500.00, I didn't have any problem telling him to pay me when he could.
He filed for bankruptcy after closing and I got the usual letters to creditors to throw away.
Fast forward 15 years and this gal from the mortgage company is calling on his behalf. Her description of the problem is that the map she has (of a 4-acre lot with a house and driveway on it) is just "too big" (it's probably 18" x 24") and she'd like to get a legal-size copy. It was simply too easy to tell her "I'm sorry, but my files are closed on that one."
You missed a great marketing opportunity, Kent!!
Good on ya.
Sometimes I think people expect a reaction when they need something that I have. I'll sleep good tonight even if they never get their stuff.
muchos gracias Kent!
I'm sure I'll be getting a reputation as a cold hearted jerk, but here goes...
Don't know about everyone else, but when a business has something I need (product or service), I go there expecting to pay money to the business owner who provides it. And, as a business owner I also expect to receive money from people coming to me for something they need. I just never got that that was somehow controversial or wrong to some surveyors. But it certainly seems to be the case. I don't get it. Why should surveyors be expected to keep the rent paid and the lights on just so folks can stop by and get what we own for free?
Now, I expect to be educated.
ibenhavin
> You missed a great marketing opportunity, Kent!!
ROTFLMAO!
> I'll sleep good tonight even if they never get their stuff.
I didn't mind that either (a) they will hire some other surveyor who might need the work to mash that house on a four-acre lot onto a legal-size sheet or (b) they will suddenly learn how to operate the "REDUCE" button on a copy machine.
> Don't know about everyone else, but when a business has something I need (product or service), I go there expecting to pay money to the business owner who provides it.
Well, I saw it this way in the case I described. Some mortgage broker needed a piece of paper to put into the loan package they'd be hustling out the door PDQ in their little for-profit enterprise-bordering-on-scam. And that same mortgage broker didn't really care whether or not you could read the piece of paper as long as it was 11" x 14" (presumably so that it would fit into their scanner).
As far as they were concerned, it was just a piece of paper, not information that anyone would pay more than cursory attention to. So the size mattered most and whether the map reflected current conditions or was even legible mattered least.
I'm in the business of selling the sort of correct and reliable information about real property that only a professional surveyor can really provide. They weren't looking for my actual product, so I couldn't help them even were I inclined to.
A fellow surveyor had the pleasure of being called into an attorney's office to assist him with a situation. The surveyor had performed a survey for the attorney's client several years earlier. Now, that client wanted to sue someone for some reason and they needed help from the surveyor. The surveyor said he would be more than happy to help them out so long as he was paid his charge in full in advance along with payment for the survey that was done several years earlier but never paid for by this jerk. Before the idiot client could say anything, the attorney whipped out his checkbook and asked how much it would take, as he assured the client that the total would be added to the bill the client would get from him.
I can take a full-size map into Staples here, and bring a thumb drive, and they will make me an electronic copy for 25¢. I can print it out on a full-size printer, or reduce-to-fit on a legal, ledger, or standard size paper.
What surprises me about this is
that you didn't lien the property 15 years ago and just keep it up. You've been known to go back weeks on the old board to keep and argument going. Why you wouldn't, for your own personal gratification, spend the money and time just to make their life difficult "when" they need to sell, puzzles me more than a little. In fact, I really had thought this was your modis operandi on dealing with clients, which is why you have such a high "pay rate". That or you don't let anything out without cash (pay up sucka)!
At any rate, I don't think you missed a marketing opportunity nearly as you missed a karma induced and handed to you on a silver platter moment. I truly cherish instituting the a-hole tax, especially several years later. Revenge is not a dish best served cold nearly as much as important as long as it's served. 🙂
Like that attorney's attitude. He must be part of the 0.1% of all attorneys given a bad name by the other 99.9%.
What surprises me about this is
> At any rate, I don't think you missed a marketing opportunity nearly as you missed a karma induced and handed to you on a silver platter moment.
Oh, I don't know what the full story was there and, to tell the truth, I can't say I really care all that much. I got the idea from the mortgage hustler that my original client was still alive, which is great if he actually had ALS and is beating the odds against long-term survival.
In any event, the client discharged his obligation to pay me in his bankruptcy, so a lien wouldn't have accomplished anything other than possibly exposing myself to a lawsuit.
The reason I've had so few non-paying clients over the years is that I don't take everyone who calls as a client. I decide beforehand whether they're the sort of client I want or not. The few non-payers were more of an education than anything. I learned to adjust the client filters differently.
I don't know about all that necessarily. At all the firms I worked at we regularly shared information with other surveyors or engineers. At my last engineering/surveying gig, as a new guy, we were about to do a job on or near one of another guy's job. I knew him very well and had done lots of sub-work for him at my first engineering/surveying gig. I just piped up suggesting why don't we just ask him for his data. I know he keeps all his work really handy. They look at me "you know him?". They suggested I give him a call. I just said give me the truck keys and I'll be right back. I come back about an hour later with all the project data and maps. It would have been only about 15 minutes but he likes to socialize and I always enjoyed our conversations. I would easily put him in my top-10 list of the niciest people I've ever known.
LarryP could very likely tell you who I'm talking about within 2 guesses. I'd be suprised if it took all 2.
I'm not sure I really see the problem with Kent's response. He stated in the post that he's not into the residential title surveying market. It's his choice as to who he has as clientele. If he doesn't want to bother with it, especially considering the circumstances, why are folks crying for a "marketing opportunity"?
The fact that he essentially ignored the title idiot is secondary, and actually funny IMO.
If you reversed the situation and ask the title company to reissue,re-date, and re-size a 15 year old title policy to fit on a different size sheet, the title company would laugh at you for days, after hanging up.
Glenn:
I'm 100% certain that Brother Johnson's suggestion was comedy, and comedy gold at that.
Someone stiffs you for, say, $500.00 and fifteen years later, with a reasonable rate of interest you need to collect more than $1100.00 on that bill just to stay even. Why would anyone pay that when they can call one of the quickie-dickie operations and get a piece of paper with a surveyor's name on it for $500.00 or less? Isn't going to happen often enough to compile statistics.
The way I work that problem is just to forget about the whole deal and move on to something profitable and important, of which there is no shortage of things. I enjoyed telling the mortgage gal that the file was closed on that one since it proved to be a completely successful line for which she had absolutely no answer. My only lingering bother is wondering whether the original client is actually dead from ALS or a case of a miraculous recovery, which I certainly wouldn't begrudge him. I'm sure I'll find out sometime, either way.
> I can take a full-size map into Staples here, and bring a thumb drive, and they will make me an electronic copy for 25¢.
I wonder if that's why thirty Staples are closing nationwide. $0.25 is way too cheap for scanning large format documents and saving them to a thumb drive.
Glenn,
to be perfectly clear, that was a "call back" joke from a similar discussion Kent and I were involved in the other day.
Andy
> Glenn,
>
> to be perfectly clear, that was a "call back" joke from a similar discussion Kent and I were involved in the other day.
>
> Andy
Doh! I haven't been keeping up. Funny as it is, I'm sure there are some on the board who genuinely believe that Kent actually missed a marketing opportunity.:-$
> I wonder if that's why thirty Staples are closing nationwide. $0.25 is way too cheap for scanning large format documents and saving them to a thumb drive.
Agreed. I don't know if it's just this store, or if they all do that. I was floored the first time I had them make a copy for me.
Funny as it is, I'm sure there are some on the board who genuinely believe that Kent actually missed a marketing opportunity.
Yep, and a whole 'nother bunch of 'em that thinks he is hiding his plat to limit his future liability...
