When one of our recent customer’s, Mrs. McKenzie asked us to complete her reconstruction after her daughters house flooded out in Laguna Niguel, CA we where excited as we always are to handle a water loss from start to finish. We know when we handle everything that we can manage the quality control on the job. We learned a big lesson on quality control with Mrs. McKenzie and that was to never patch a ceiling, no matter what. Not even if the customer pleads their case to the fullest extent.
We did this for Mrs. McKenzie, we spot patched the paint because she wanted to save some money ($150 more to paint the whole room ceiling). We took the paint sample down to Home Depot and they matched the paint as they do for many of our jobs. The problem with matching paint is that it is never exact and no matter how close it is, it is still going to be off when doing a patch. But, we offered to do it anyway.
So we started work, completed the work upstairs, in the master bedroom, in the bathroom, downstairs behind the built in cabinet and then we got to the ceiling. We did it, we patched it and we paid for it. We paid for it because we always want our customers to be happy with our work performed. But when we did it, she was not happy, she was actually very mad. Almost like we didn’t have the conversation informing her that a patch will stand out and that for $150 bucks we should paint the whole ceiling. So, when we found out how unsatisfied she was with patching vs painting the entire wall, we decided to repaint it all for her at our own expense.
So, we learned our lesson. We knew what was right, but in this economy you are always trying to save your customers money. No longer will we patch paint on ceilings for customers no matter what the circumstances are. We want satisfied customers and we will not set ourselves up for failure on the next water damaged, flooded, mold house needing remediation, restoration or reconstruction.
