In finding out that I have an allergy to dust I decided it was time to have the ducts cleaned. Something that hasn’t been done in the almost 8 years I lived in my home (I know I know… I should have done it years ago). On the advice of

someone in the Leslieville Group on Facebook I went on to Groupon and found a deal, did some research on the company and bought myself a deal for Duct Cleaning Depot. I set up my appointment over email with Adrian for a Friday afternoon at 2:30pm.

I can work from home so it wasn’t too big of a deal to have the appointment in the middle of the day. What became a bigger deal was when I got a call and an email to tell me that they were going to be about an hour late. That happens, totally understand. But then an hour turned to 90 minutes and I made a phone call to the technician who had called me. At 4:30 he told me he was at the 407 and 404. Being that I work with a client up in Thornhill and that is my travel route home I knew he’d barely make it for 5pm, 2.5 hours after my appointment time!

Those who know me well know that I am crazy about punctuality since time is someone’s most valuable commodity so I got frustrated and emailed and called Adrian he owner and gave him a piece of my mind. He offered to do the work at no charge (ok, I might have demanded it but he agreed) if I would reschedule. So we made a date for Wednesday.

Now I hope you’ve made it this far in the post cause this is where the lesson comes in and things turn around for me and my ducts. Adrian and his technician showed up on time and did a fantastic job. When it came down talking about the monies I decided that I wasn’t going to take the work for free. Adrian paid the taxes that was owed on top of my Groupon and we called it day. Before he left we got to talking and his technician was joking around that Adrian doesn’t usually come out to jobs and how shocked he was to see the boss hauling equipment from the truck. He wondered who I was.

Adrian explained that he wants all his customers to be happy and was embarrassed about the situation from the previous week. He said he couldn’t not come and make sure I was satisfied. What a great attitude from a small business owner! I will recommend him to anyone I know with dirty ducts.

Now on the contrary I have had painters not show up for 3 appointments and had the Appliance Repair Guys allow me to cancel an appointment without a charge in a snowstorm to then send me an invoice (so they say) that I didn’t get for the missed appointment. How did I find out? Well I got a notice from a collections agency for $95.40. Did I mention it cost $315 to repair my microwave and I had already paid that charge?  So on the other side of the customer service spectrum I will NEVER use them and will tell everyone I know the story. (I had to pay the extra charge, they did not care to hear my side of the story or that they were loosing a customer).

If you want to read more about customer service and how it affects a business, with some great stats check out Colin Shaw’s post on Linked In – 15 Statistics That Should Have Changed the Business World – But Haven’t.