Question about dealing with professionals

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’d send an email asking about a follow up. “This is FairyChatMom following up about the proposal for 123 ABC Lane. I was expecting a proposal by [date] and have not received it, do you have pricing prepared?”

Contrary to many of the posts here, I wouldn’t see getting a late quote out as indicative of the level of actual landscape service. More likely, they’re prioritizing actual contracts in hand and making sure those people are happy before spending time on potential new work especially if the sign up rate is fairly low (lots of free estimates, lots of sticker shock). Either they’re a smaller operation with one guy doing sales, estimating and project management or they could be a larger operation where they have a separate estimator who is overloaded but that’s not reflective on the production people.

Of course this doesn’t mean giving them infinite time and chances and, if you want to move on, move on. Just a different perspective from somewhat inside the industry (I’m in large commercial landscape installation, not small residential maintenance) and having been on both sides of the “Where’s my number?” question while getting vendor/subcontractor pricing.

22

In my experience, you did well just getting them to come out in the first place. I must have a significantly less than 50% success rate over the years in getting ‘professionals’ to even respond to an email/voice message/missed call, let alone them actually coming out to give a quote.

23

My go-to handyman did not show for an appointment to come over for an estimate last week, and didn’t respond to my followup message asking if he was OK & did he want to reschedule. He’s someone I’ve used in the past who did good work.

I’m worried he’s hiding out from ICE. Or worse.

The government goon squad can’t be improving tradespersons’ responsiveness.

24

Our lawn mowing service was $130 (we have a large yard).

Now he wants $80 per hour. He’s down to one person crews. The guy who came to cut our lawn was the owner’s brother. He took three hours. $240. I’m cutting the grass myself for the rest of the season.