that's not policing our own. That's running off half cocked and starting a storm that doesn't need to be started.
calling the owner of the other company and letting him know what's going on, and giving him the opportunity to make it right, is policing our own.
especially, if like Reno said, the company has a pretty good reputation. Give them a chance to resolve it before you crucify them.
Once you have employees, you quickly realize that you don't know everything that happens. And it's nice when someone gives you a heads up instead of just bashing you. As an industry why are we such *******s to eachother? Why are we always looking for a way to pull down another contractor?
We already have the general public thinking we are overcharging thieves, so we help them by cannibalizing eachother? Just doesn't make sense.
I am by no means condoning what contractor one did, I'm just saying give them first crack at fixing the mess they created, before Mr. Burns releases the hounds on them.
Edited to add:
We do a lot of repeat and referral work. But over the years, I've gotten more referrals from my fellow contractors than can ever be traced to any customer. A customer may use us 4-5 times in a 5 yr span, and refer us to 2-3 people, and maybe they will refer us, etc. So if you go out, we can possibly attribute 10-15 jobs in repeats and referrals to one customer in a 5 yr period.
We get 20-30 referrals a year from a single contractor in a year. Overall, we probably get about 120 referrals a year from other EC's. Some of these EC are larger commercial guys that don't do residential, some are our direct competition. But they can't handle the job, they send them to us.
So, you definately need to weigh a customers story (of which you only know 1 of the 3 sides of the story) with good relationships with your fellow contractors.
Now, if contractor #1 had a reputation of being horrible, ripping off customers, screwing up, etc, then all bets are off. But that's not the case according to Reno's OP.
[This message has been edited by mahlere (edited 10-12-2006).]
[This message has been edited by mahlere (edited 10-12-2006).]
