Customer ed.

[bandmiller2]

Wile back we talked about folks bringing us logs that don't have a clue.A local guy brought me a load of the crookedest mud caked logs you ever saw,I sucked it up and did what I could.Spent a little time explaining to him about milling showing him the folly in crooked logs.Yesterday he came back with 17 nice oak logs,he's a nice guy not fussy and pays,theirs also no rush on this order all 1" board. Frank C.

[r.man]

Good for you Frank, ignorance is a correctable problem if someone just takes the time. Just because someone isn't young anymore doesn't mean they don't want to or can't learn. I have talked to numerous people over the years who spoke fondly of another adult who corrected some lack in their education.

[spencerhenry]

milled up 27 reclaimed half logs the other day. guy needed 2000 feet of flooring, but needs it cheap. wants it cut as wide as possible, but anything over 10" is 1-1/16", 10" or narrower is 13/16", each width has to be in its own stack. i was ,as usual, promised that all the nails and metal had already been removed. i hit 1 washer, 2 screws, and 7 nails, that doesnt include the stuff that i saw before i put the logs on the mill. it milled up really nice, i kept the boards as wide and long as possible, 21 foot 1x10's can be a pain to handle. stacked it all, loaded my trailer and delivered it to aspen. we unload it by hand, and it gets put everywhere in this house, all through the front door. he keeps saying how the boards are so long (thats what he asked for), and complaining that he didnt get more flooring. i must have said 3 or 4 times "the logs are what the logs are, you cant get any more out of them". he probably got about 2000 square feet, but he thought he was going to get double that. originally i had told him a delivery price for the lumber, a pickup price for the logs, and 8 hours of milling time at a minimum. but i never saw the logs until i went to pick them up, i get there and the driveway is full of cars, have to wait 20 minutes to get the place cleared out, i finally back up the driveway and the logs are spread out in front of the garage. i had asked him to put the logs perpendicular to the road so i could drive past the ends. i had to load a few, reset, load a few, reset, and finally have them move the logs by hand to where i could reach them. when he first called and wanted a price he said there were 26 or 27 10' logs. there were actually 26 logs, but only 3 or 4 were 10 to 12' the rest were 16 to 18' and 3 were over 22', and then there were 9 logs from 3' to 6'. most of the logs were either half logs, or a few quarter logs, only 3 were actually whole logs. he asks how smooth the lumber will be and i tell him that the mill cuts very flat unless i hit metal then the blade goes south, i recommend that he run the material through a thickness planer to make sure it is all the same thickness. the mill does a good job, but there are still variations, especially when cutting such thin material so wide and long. he tells me that "it doesnt need to be perfect" but in the same sentence says that "the edges have to be perfectly straight". to me that means that it must all run through the edger to get perfectly square straight edges. he also wanted the maximum amount of board footage, and wanted it cut from 4" to 10" in 1" increments, 4,5,6,7,8,9, and 10" boards. in the end it took me 15 hours to cut it all, mill the logs through and through all the way down to 13/16 left on the deck of the mill, then run every one of the hundreds of pieces from 3' to 21 feet through the edger, then stack by width. the 15 hours includes 13 blade changes, 2 broke, and 10 hit metal, only one actually was taken off for just getting dull.
i am glad to have the job. but now i have to explain to him why it took 15 hours instead of 8. he never seems to understand that a 4 foot log takes just as long to load, but has very little board footage. or that every time i hit a nail, that it takes me 5 or so minutes to change it. or that if he wants the material ready to install as flooring right off the mill means that i have to take a little more time when cutting it, and that 8 different stacks of 8 different widths takes longer to run through the edger. and that hand unloading through the front door of a $3,000,000 house is not usually part of the delivery.

[Dan_Shade]

a customer getting a bill for 15 hours when he was told it would be 8 has a right to be upset.

I put estimates together on scaled log volume, location, additional processing, etc.

[Kansas]

The more I hear of these stories, the more I am glad we no longer custom cut someone else's logs. Only way you can approach those jobs is to tell them plainly that there are no guarantees on the hours it will take. Its one thing to provide good service for a customer and maybe do an extra bit to please a customer. Its another thing to get taken advantage of. Sounds like you are doing this by the hour. Charge for it. Charge for the blades that were wrecked too. Charge for the extra unloading. i have a feeling no matter what you do he won't be happy anyway.

On a side note, will he have to worry about boards shrinking when he puts them down? Granted, thats his problem. But he might try to make it your problem. I hope the guy that owns the 3 million dollar house isn't a lawyer.

[cutterboy]

Frank, you did the right thing. Being kind to nice people always pays off. You were good to him by sawing up those nasty logs and by taking the time to educate him about logs. Now you have a good customer.

  It's not a crime being ignorant. We can't expect people to know good logs from bad ones unless they log or saw. Reasonable people are willing to learn if someone takes the time to show them. But of course many people are not reasonable at all ( like spencerhenry's pal ) and they should be avoided or at least never given a second chance to screw you.

[Cedarman]

There is nothing wrong with being nice.  It is a very good practice to be nice.  You can be very nice as you explain how the logs were not positioned as they were supposed to be.  You can be very nice as you explain that you understood that most logs would be about 10'.  You can be very nice as you explain that you were led to believe that there was not metal in the logs.  You can be very nice as you explain to your customer that all these issues caused a huge amount of extra work and expense on your part and you are sure that they would want to compensate you for all of this extra work.  Put the monkey on the back of the person it belongs on.  You must sell your customer that you are deserving of much more money than you first thought because things were different than you were led to believe.  Be nice as you explain how great the lumber is and how great it will look in this big expensive house.

I run a business, not a charity.