In business, it has become more important than ever before to give full disclosure to clients when preparing proposals. Whether they read them or not you better know what's in them. On monday we delivered a completed/restored frame back to the client that we had for a few months. The job took forever... but resurrections take time. When the client originally contacted us, she mentioned that the piece (a mirror and frame)had a few small areas in need of attention due to the piece having fallen off the wall and that it needed a new mirror. We thought nothing of it and asked her to bring it by when she could. On the drive over, she was involved in a pretty serious accident and the frame was nearly destroyed. You can see what I'm talking about in the photos.
After it was complete, we delivered it for almost nothing (we just wanted it to arrive safely back to the clients home!). Let me just say... one of the greatest things about our work is the "wow" factor that we're almost always met with when our clients see their restored pieces again (for the first time). In this case, we were met with... "oh... well it looks pretty good, but uhhh, the touch up material looks like paint. Didn't you say in your quote that you would touch up with gold leaf?" We replied "no... our quote wouldn't have said that, as we don't just touch up with gold leaf... we can only spot gild whole areas of a frame like this... too many areas of repair to be concerned about. After all, the frame had already been touched up with some paint in the past." She says... "NO, I'm sure you said you'd touch up with leaf! I'll go check my computer and find your pdf'd quote and show you!" She comes back not able to find it, and we said we'd look it up when we arrived back at the studio. For now, we left it with her, letting her know that it's important to us that she's happy with her piece. We get back, find the pdf quote, and sure enough is says "If you choose the touch up option, NO LEAF WILL BEE USED, ONLY PAINT-BASED PRODUCTS." We sent it to her... haven't heard back.
Like I said, Dot your T's and Cross your "eyes". =)
wow, don't ya just love customers like that... very good thing you had the quote in writing, eh?
ReplyDeleteit is sometimes surprising how one customer will be soooo appreciative and the next may seem completely indifferent but there is nothing worse than someone who complains about a good deal and a job well done! grrrrrrrr