Me: Hello, Holy Cow Surveying
Her: How much to do a survey?
Me: That depends on many things. First, where is it located.
Her: Why would that matter?
Me: (A few minutes highlighting the typical basic information needed.)
Her: Well, its on Fourth Street.
Me: What city, Ma'am?
Her: Why would that matter?
Me: (A few more minutes of explanation.) BTW, how large a tract is it?
Her: Why would that matter?
Me: (Another minute or two trying to get it through her thick skull that there is no single number for every occasion.
Her: I don't understand any of that. If I tell you to do it, can you be here tomorrow?
Me: No.
Her: Forget it then. (click)
And some people wonder why surveyors have an historic image of being drunkards.
Last week he called and wanted a price over the phone for the four corners of an address, just like that. I told him to send me an e-mail and I would respond. Meanwhile I looked up the site and knew it would not be simple. He called again this week, still no e-mail, wanting a rough idea. I told him, enunciating as carefully as I could, at least $1,000. I just know all he heard was the $1,000 and skipped the "at least" part. Hopefully he will go someplace else.
The problem is, if he goes someplace else, some other surveyor will do it for the typical 400, and it will be another crap job.
N
What about getting a call from a guy asking for a price of the survey.
Then several minutes or hours later, a lady (wife I assume) would call and ask for the price of the survey giving almost similar details?
If I know it's from the same client then I would give a higher price for the 2nd call. Then the 1st caller would call again later and close the deal on the cheaper price.;-)
Or you get a phone call from a man and you go into great detail over the particulars of the survey and you close the deal and he orders the survey at a set price. Then a couple of hours or maybe days later he calls back and cancels the order, saying that he didn't know it at the time, but his wife was on the phone at the same time ordering the survey from another surveyor and they were going to go with him. ---Yeah, right --- You know good and well that he just went out and peddled the price to another surveyor. But at least it's good to know that he just spared you from having to deal with another one of those types of clients (him and his wife) and you usually find out who the other surveyor was to boot.
Not a Ring ring, but a walk in
Last week a buyer of a large 4000+ acre farm comes in to talk engineering and asks about a survey. Knowing very little about the who's what's and where's of the property, he only wanted a rough estimate of the costs for a survey and I told him there is roughly 28 miles of line to run. For budgetary purposes he COULD see the costs at $20-28k. It just depends.
I know the county and it is unique. It is a spanish land grant with an unofficial PLSS breakdown down by a private surveyor in the early 1900's. Conveyances have been by metes and bounds and by aliquot descriptions. Sometimes they don't mix well.
The buyer about fell out of his chair over my quote. He then says he has talked to another surveyor and was quoted $7-9k. He wanted to know why the huge difference in costs, so we had a nice discussion about what I would do versus a low cost survey as well as things like "you get what you pay for". After about an hour of both of us getting an education, he commits to me to do the survey. He did ask that I try to keep the costs down as much as I can. He also wants me to let him know right away if there is any problems that arise.
This guy will get what he pays for on this survey. My survey may keep him from making a $14m mistake. I have already found the farm is farming more than what they were deeded. It has only just begun.
SD
