I’ll never forget the time I was charged $25 for waiting until the last moment to cancel a hair appointment. It was not pleasant, but it was fair. After all, the stylist is running a business based on clients and had I warned him in advance, he could have replaced me. I sucked it up. It’s about personal responsibility.
I cancelled a dental appointment at the last moment recently and I volunteered to pay the cancellation fee. Because I have been a long standing client of that dentist for almost 8 years now, his receptionist waived the fee, based solely on my history of not canceling appointments. Had she charged me, I would have been fine with that. Why should the dentist lose out financially because I was not organized enough to give him notice? Again, the service industry is based on clients showing up. No client, no payment. No payment, no business.
Why do I mention this? Well I own a cleaning company, of course. Rarely do I receive cancellations from my clients. And when I do, they are really good about giving me notice. I’ve been fortunate in that regard.
However, I ran a coupon in July, 2010. It has taken a year to work through them (1,300+ sold) and I have learned a great deal about human nature. I have learned that very few people are willing to take personal responsibility.
So many times people have called within hours of a scheduled cleaning to inform me that “something came up” and that they needed to cancel. In fairness to all who purchased the coupon, I did not bend any rules. Regardless of the reasons for the forfeit, I would not allow those who forfeited to reschedule.
Many of those who forfeited were not happy that I stood by the 24 hour cancellation rule, but they got over it and moved on. And then there were those who—for whatever reason, believed that they were above having to take any responsibility. Even though they chose to forfeit, it was always someone else’s fault—namely, my fault for not allowing them to do what they wanted to do. We had instances where employees would drive great distances only to discover that people were not at home to receive them. And they actually expected us to allow them to reschedule.
Several of those who forfeited even reported us to the BBB. It was almost unbelievable that in spite of the fact that they could read the terms of the coupon, they were willing to take it that far—-and to the BBB’s credit, they ruled in our favor.
Life is all about lessons. I am now more keen than ever about the importance of taking personal responsibility for my own actions. Never would I attempt to hurt another company based on my own issues. If I forfeit and lose or have to pay, I’ll suck it up. In fact, I’ve always been willing to take it on the chin when I know I’m wrong.
Oprah always advises us to look inward to discover what lessons we have learned from unpleasant situations. An important lesson I learned here is that it is a bad idea to run any type of deal where you are taking on complete strangers. With my regular caseload, I establish relationships and I know them. I have no idea who the coupon purchasers are. Ironically, many of them are actually people I’d never take on as regular clients.
Finally, another lesson I learned is that there is a silver lining in everything. Some of those who purchased coupons turned out to be trusted, loyal, wonderful regular clients. And for that, I am quite thrilled!
I take personal responsibility for the situation I find myself in with the coupons, by the way. I’ll just continue to work through until they expire!
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UPDATE: The coupons did expire and we are still standing. We learned a valuable lesson and under no circumstances will we ever run another coupon. If any coupon reps are reading, do not contact my company, please. Thanks.