I got off the phone with a former client a bit ago. From the second I said "Hello" to him he started in.
him: "You set my corner wrong on my property."
me:"Hold on, let me get your job opened up so we are looking at the same thing."
him: (while the job is opening on my computer) "I haven't been up there since you did the job in 2017, until today. I went up there and the pin you set is way off."
me: (job opens on my computer) "Okay, that rebar we set is supposed to be on the line between two other rebars we found." (heavily wooded and one rebar is on a hillside, the line crosses over a point and the other is down on the other hillside. We are talking about 160' feet total of elevation change in the 1,000 feet. You can't see from one to the other.)
him: Well it's not.
me: The two rebar we found are over a thousand feet apart, how can you tell it's not on the property line? Did you use a compass?
him: No. I didn't use a compass. But somebody painted the line with blue paint and I found pieces old wire where the blue paint was in some spots. Your pin isn't where the blue paint or the old wire is.
me: Sometimes people try to paint lines just try to paint them close enough to the line to satisfy their needs. That old fence wasn't straight but the deed called for a straight line so we set your corner in a straight line between the two rebar we found. (the old fence remnants are anywhere from 50' left of the line, on the line, to 25' right of the line. Crooked as a dog's hind leg and only just barely there with short pieces protruding from trees.)
him: Well it's not in a straight line.
me: How do you know that?
him: Because I went up there and looked.
me: But you didn't use a compass?
him: No. But I have the aerial survey from the county.
me: You mean a Tax Map?
him: I don't know what it is. It's from the county.
me: We will come out there and run that 1,000-foot line again and if our corner is not on the line we will fix it free of charge. If it is on the line we will have to charge you our hourly rate for our time.
him: That's?ÿfine because it isn't on the line.
me: There is a well up there. How far is our rebar from the pumpjack?
him: I don't know.
me: It should be about 130' from it.
him: Well, it's not.
me: How far is it?
him: About 50'.
me: Did you measure it?
him: No. It just looked like about 50'. I'll go up there and do that though and get back to you.
me: Okay, sounds good. If we set the corner wrong we will move it free of charge. If it's in the correct location you will have to pay us.
him: Okay.
I didn't show the fence on my plat because there was no actual fenceline, just a few spots here and there we found some old wire in a few trees. I couldn't say exactly how the fence ran enough to show it on the plat. I also told him the existing well road is near his line and he agreed with that but still insisted on the 50' distance our corner was from the pumpjack. The well road is about 100' from the pumpjack and enters the well site on the south corner and the pumpjack on the north center of the site. The well site is about 100'X180'.
I do get tired of old clients calling me and acting like I should know who they are and exactly where they are located and remember their job number as soon as I hear their name. I talk to hundreds of people on the phone every year. I can't remember who I talked to yesterday!
I made it clear if we are wrong we will fix it free of charge but if we come out there because he 'thinks' it's not on the line then we will have to charge him.
He is certain that we messed up even after agreeing with what I described to him about the location of the line. He even agrees with all the corners we found, just not the one we set. Maybe we did set it wrong. I am confident we didn't based on the redundancy we use during each survey, but I can't rule that out. But to call at 3:00 pm on Saturday and start chewing on me...... I spent a good half hour talking to him, more time checking our data and making sure I didn't mess up, at least as far as the data shows.
Now I am waiting for his call after he goes and measures from the pumpjack to see if he still wants us to come out and run the line again.
This is the first time that I can remember getting a call from a client telling me I gave them the too much land. Anyone else every get a call like this?
?ÿ
This is the first time that I can remember getting a call from a client telling me I gave them the too much land. Anyone else every get a call like this?
No. No ones ever called me?ÿgiving away free land. Maybe i should start answering those toll-free, and out of area code calls.
I don't know what's tougher, dealing with clients when?ÿ owning your own business or dealing with a boss at a company.?ÿ The kicker for me is that the clients are temporary (i.e., I don't see them everyday for 8 hrs./day).?ÿ That works for me, but I feel your pain.?ÿ
In had a guy call me about a month ago about a job I did about an hour from here in 1993, which was a quarter of a century ago! Said we flagged out a line about 1000 feet long between two pins we set and that the flagging is all gone! I respectfully said yes, a windy Maine winter will take its toll on plastic flagging. He thought I should come down and redo it, that I might want to do this since I did such a shoddy job last time. I told him that if the job had been last month I'd likely be right down but that I was not going to do anything about something we did over 20 years ago, even if we DID do something wrong or poorly. Told him I could send him a proposal to redo the line and that I'd need a deposit to book it. He said he'd have to do something else. I expect I'll never learn what he did.
