1st one star review

The Office Business
1

here is our first 1 star review, we currently have 22 5 star reviews and 1 4 star review.

"Here we go again, a small business finding it necessary to build on a small amount of success in the unskilled field of window washing, by inserting greed into their fee for service. They seemed good enough, they washed my windows, didn’t take them long, and they charged a reasonable fee, for unskilled labor. A year goes by and low and behold they have upped their fee by at least 30 percent, and now they offer a more complex menu of screen cleaning, dusting versus actually cleaning and of course new fees attach. Top it off, they now have a minimum fee (higher of course) and I can’t help but wonder how that works–say you have a small home with three windows how much do you pay versus a home with 10 windows, such as in my home. Do I pay the minimum and get all 10 windows washed, or do you start at the minimum and add on from there, and does the poor customer with only three windows get ripped off. These boys started off with a fair and reasonable charge per window, easy to understand, easy to compute, but greed reared its ugly head and now they are trying to squeeze as much money as they can from customers. This isn’t even the $125 an hr as one viewer stated, its $150 minimum with various and assorted charges added on. I tried to rationalize this because I really needed to have my windows cleaned, but the more I thought about it, it the more I thought it stinks, so consider me an x-customer.

Lorrie G"

Here is my response, what do you think?

"Hi Lorrie, I’m sorry to hear you were unhappy with us. As we said on the phone, about 9 months ago we raised one time residential minimum to $150. Without going into all the details as to why, sufficed to say we are striving to build a sustainable business who can offer great service to our customers while at the same time giving a good wage to our employees (if you hadn’t heard we just hired our first employee a few weeks ago!) We took a look at all the factors and decided that in order to keep our company healthy we had to set our one time residential minimum at $150.

When we spoke on the phone I let you know about our new minimum. I double checked with you as to whether we had cleaned all your windows when we last cleaned them 2 years ago. If there were any more windows or if there are any other services, we could add them to get you the $150 value. (we don’t want to charge you $150 for $117 of services if possible, so we try to find what else we can deliver to get you your value. For other customers we’ve cleaned some solar panels, re-screened a window screen, etc…) You said that we had not done 1 window so I suggested we can add that one and we can also upgrade to washing your screens with our screen washing machine (last time we had simply brushed off the screens)

Again we’re sorry we couldn’t find a solution for you, please give us a call if you change your mind."

if it matters, if you click on her yelp profile she has 56 reviews, 29 of them are 1 star reviews

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Ugghh. That sucks. At least you’ve got a ton of other great reviews. Reasonable people know that you will eventually get an unreasonable customer.

If that happened to me, I probably wouldn’t even respond. I wouldn’t offer to try and make things better for her. She’s a flake and a toxic customer. I might send her a private message trying to reason with her in the hopes that she would remove her review, but even that would probably be time wasted.

$150 is a very reasonable minimum, btw. Ours is currently $225

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I’d rage hard

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I’m sure I’ve got a one star out there somewhere; she’s listed in contacts as “16 hours-$425, don’t answer phone you idiot”

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5

If it’s “unskilled” labor, why is she calling you?
If she thinks your prices are so high, and they stink, why hasn’t she opened her own business and gotten her own gravy train?

She is a irrational complaining twit, and I would be glad to be rid of her. I would have asked her to drop the review, since she did not even USE your services. I’m pretty sure there is legal precedent about people leaving reviews for service they never paid for or used, and ended up getting sued and losing.

Someone being unreasonable or too hard to please and leaving a crappy review is one thing, IF they actually paid for service. Someone leaving some whine fest and did not even BUY anything, is a FAKE review.

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we cleaned her windows 2 years ago

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That wasn’t a good enough reason for Yelp to remove our one bad review. Trust me, I tried, lol.

8

People are so petty. She’d been happy if you charged what she wanted to pay but since price wasn’t to her liking she has to belittle you. I love how hit or miss this business can be. One person hangs up the moment they hear our min, (same as yours) and others say we don’t charge enough.

People can read past complainers and legit complaints. Keep plugging away.

9

I think your response is very good. Positive and upbeat…willing to resolve.

I think almost anyone reviewing your services will be able to see through what is really going on here with the one star review. Their review has no substance regarding your services only about your pricing structure. They also get personal and condescending. When I read one star reviews they better have good facts and credibility to them or else I see them as someone with a general pissy attitude wanting to just hurt the supplier or service.

Keep your head high and keep up the good work !

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I vote that you craft a reply like this restaurant did:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eater.com/platform/amp/2014/10/6/6925273/restaurateur-pens-epic-takedown-of-entitled-yelper

That way, you’ll never get another customer like her, lol.

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11

why is it “greedy” for us to have a minimum but not greedy for her to want to pay less than our minimum.

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Unskilled!!! Tell her to drop off a high rise building or even, just get up on a 40ft ladder and clean windows. What a joke. Lol

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Huh? I’m saying she’s whack for being that way with you. Get those all the time myself, just haven’t gotten a negative review because of it! And the unskilled part of the review -_- sorry you got that but from previous posts it seems you’re doing well for yourself overall. Hope it continues

14

She was not really relating the experience she had two years ago. She was complaining about your estimate and how you were over charging (in her eyes).

I understand that people should have the ability to share their thoughts about whatever they want. However, you don’t think she is trying to damage your business and your reputation? All because she is pissed that you won’t GIVE her something at a price SHE feels like paying. These review site are all about rating businesses for the service they performed in the experience of the transaction.
It certainly would make places like Yelp, WORTHLESS, if everyone started reviewing businesses they aren’t even doing business WITH. And think of the destruction to business owner’s reputation if every weenie with a smart phone could run around slinging mud.

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Ebay use to be feedback wild west in its early days. Now you only leave feedback if you actually bought something from that particular seller. It would be nice if other review sites could do something similar but how would that work, you know? How does google or facebook really know if you provided that person a service.

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i’m agreeing with you, i’m just pointing out that she thinks it’s not greedy to want to pay less.

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No need to get overly concerned. Most people know that the internet brings out the worst in some people.

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18

On that basis, and the fact that she made ad hominem attacks in her review, I decided to report it to Yelp. I encourage any one else who feels similarly to report it as well.

While you’re at it, go ahead and report our single one star review, too :smirk:. (Actually, our situation was a little bit different, and in retrospect we bore some of the responsibility by not sniffing out the flakiness and declining to do business with her, at all)

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19

I just recently went through a rough situation with a crazy lady who tipped me and then texted me a few days later at 2am acting like she hated me. I didn’t want to get into it so I sent her money back including tip and blocked her phone number.

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20

Ben, just for fun, I read your Yelp reviews. Do yourself a favor and just give a short answer. “If we can be of help in the future, give us a call. Thank You for your business, we always want to please our customers.” Anyone can see this is a rant. I believe you rise above this with a short, polite answer; and that a long defense just makes the review look worse. While it seems glaring at present, I also believe it won’t take long for more positive reviews to totally outweigh the damage this one would cause. You have a great company, and mad skills. Let the bitty clean her own windows…or get Mr. Bucket and get her stuff stolen. It’ll come back to haunt her. Total respects to you, Sir. Shake it off and go make money…out earn the problem. :wink:

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