Would you take $3000 or write a Bad Google Review?
Hi All,
I need some perspective because I am fuming and I want to make the right decision.
The Backstory: We have had a basement waterproofing company who was awful. They did both my house and a rental we have that is currently occupied with tenants. They were supposed to take 2 days for each job but repeatedly just didn't call or show up. Every day I was told they would be there the next day, every day I had to call them (repeatedly because they don't answer their phones), only to find some new reason they couldn't/wouldn't be out that day. For reasons not worth typing I typically obtained this information past 1 pm at the earliest and frequently later. This went on for a week and a half. Meanwhile I'm asking my tenant to stay home because someone has to be there when they are there. My tenant bend over backwards to be sure someone would be home the whole time. It was incredibly embarrassing to repeatedly tell her that they again needed to come the "next day" and see if she could be home.
The Discount: After the initial no call no show I wrote a pretty terrible review about them on google. The manager called me nearly immediately and offered me $2500 of the jobs (combined) to take the review down. That seemed fair enough, since at that time they had only missed on day that they were supposed to be there.
Fast forward a week, they have still not completed the rental and are saying they can come out on Sunday to get it done. Job was supposed to be done the previous Friday (like a week before that Sunday, not 2 days). I tell the manager I think it would be reasonable to discuss the amount off we are getting. He agrees and says once the job is done we can talk.
Now it's the next Friday, I'm chasing the company down to get the final inspection on the rental done and request to talk to the manager to finalize the discount we're going to get.
The NDA: The manager is immediately incredibly defensive, says they went above and beyond sending guys out on a Sunday to finish the job and he doesn't think any additional discount is needed since it was just an "inconvenience" for me. I pointed out that it was not above and beyond to finish a job they promised to finish the week before and it's not just an inconvenience but it affects my business as now I have created bad will with my tenants and need to compensate them for their excessive time wasted on this.
I told him I wanted half off the job. This sent him over the edge, he started yelling and said he would give me $500 more off and that was it then threatened to take away all of the discount unless I sign an NDA. He said that the amount was "a lot of money" and he is not giving me anything else.
Between the 2 jobs my total bill is about $25K, so I really don't feel like a total of $3000 is a lot of money, but then again when I think of what else I could buy with 3 grand it really is.
My Dilemma: So here's my dilemma, I'm pissed and I don't like being threatened so I want to just write the terrible google review telling everyone to stay away from this company and that they pay people to keep the bad reviews off of google. BUT... $3000 is kind of a lot of money, it would buy the cabinets in a small flip I'm doing for example.
So BP, what would you do??