sweendogg
Member
I know my situation is different as I am direclty linked to a retail side of the store much like Ken Snow is and few others on board, but there have been many times when I will convince our customers to replace rather than clean. Granted you loose some customers, but we always seem to keep their business 95% of time.
My question is how do you convince your customers that they are at the point of replacement? (and if you say you have never encountered this, you are lying!
) Do you do the right thing and tell her up front? Do you tell her you'll clean it and see what happens and try to get a little money out of her? Do you ignore the entire problem and just keep servicing your customer as long as she asks you to clean it? Only to end up doing a bajillion repairs and keep your hand in their back pocket?
Case in point for our company: today I turned down an $800.00 tile job that could have ballooned into a 1500-2000 regrout job on top of the cleaning. The problem was our customers had two problems. The tile that came with the house was installed poorly with stark white grout. At 6 years the grout looked terrible in traffic lanes and so a "handyman" colored the grout and did nothing to clean the grout first. It was not a color sealing system but rather a coloring only system that should have been sealed seperate.. it was not. He made a mess of a job and now 10 years later its wearing away. My test of a regular tile cleaner would remove the color sealer thus the need to color seal again but worse the grout is detereorating from the orginal install so cleaning would but alot of it out. And lord knows how well the tile was laid in the first place.. removing the old grout could show even more problems in this can worms.
So after discussing all of these concerns. I helped them conclude that purchasing a new tile all beit stone or porcelain, would be in their best interest.
I know there has to be stories out there. Lets hear them! :mrgreen:
My question is how do you convince your customers that they are at the point of replacement? (and if you say you have never encountered this, you are lying!
) Do you do the right thing and tell her up front? Do you tell her you'll clean it and see what happens and try to get a little money out of her? Do you ignore the entire problem and just keep servicing your customer as long as she asks you to clean it? Only to end up doing a bajillion repairs and keep your hand in their back pocket? Case in point for our company: today I turned down an $800.00 tile job that could have ballooned into a 1500-2000 regrout job on top of the cleaning. The problem was our customers had two problems. The tile that came with the house was installed poorly with stark white grout. At 6 years the grout looked terrible in traffic lanes and so a "handyman" colored the grout and did nothing to clean the grout first. It was not a color sealing system but rather a coloring only system that should have been sealed seperate.. it was not. He made a mess of a job and now 10 years later its wearing away. My test of a regular tile cleaner would remove the color sealer thus the need to color seal again but worse the grout is detereorating from the orginal install so cleaning would but alot of it out. And lord knows how well the tile was laid in the first place.. removing the old grout could show even more problems in this can worms.
So after discussing all of these concerns. I helped them conclude that purchasing a new tile all beit stone or porcelain, would be in their best interest.
I know there has to be stories out there. Lets hear them! :mrgreen:
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