Sure is quiet in here

How are you doing Bob ?

RHC

"tourman" wrote

How are you doing Bob ?

OK.I guess. This week was a little rough. I got real sick over Easter weekend. When the nurse saw me she ordered an ambulance to take over to the hospice.

O stayed two daus while they got me stabilized and came home. This is getting to be a regular occurance.

Working! :-)

Really?

Just got in. Big emergency. Boiler let go on the roof of a 20 story high rise. Lots of water found it's way down the main fire alarm riser. I'll probably be working all weekend... :-)

RHC: Ouch !! Another reason for a small guy not to touch major commercial accounts......who needs that hassle regardless of billed hours

It's not a "hassle". It's a challenge! It's all "time and material" too with the unfortunate insurance company on the hook - not that we would ever take advantage of the situation. I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning. :-)

RHC: Yes, I guess if you are part of a large company with loads of resources, it's the proper place to be to serve these kinds of clients. But not for a small two man company like mine. I have been working hard over the last couple of years to get rid of about 10 large commercial clients that I made the mistake of taking on, that are all a major service hassle. At the same time when I have to deal with a bunch of small residential service calls, it never fails, they call with some stupid request for either information they should have on hand, or for some major changes that eat up my labour resources. And it seems, no matter what I charge them (still being fair of course), they never learn how to change codes, keep track of users for their reports, or respond properly to alarms caused by untrained, new employees.

That's not a "challenge", that's a "hassle".....

I remotely handle a few MLB sport complexes. Every other week its the same thing, add this user, remove that user. I just bill them for my time. These complexes usually have 4 Radionics panels in each, all with the same user codes. So I just make the changes, and the software synchronizes with the panels and does the rest.

Jim Rojas

It's time like this when I'm thankful to have "retored"...:^)

"Frank Olson" wrote;

Yeah, and be able to focus as well. :^)

Regards, Robert

retired

dont shave and grow a beard, that way you wont know how's in the mirror and you'll be ok.. ;-)

ote in

f of a 20 story

Hmmmm .... With that choice, if I were you, I wouldn't take advantage of the insurance company either. :>

wrote in

oof of a 20 story

and material"

As I mentioned to you so many years ago Robert, service gets to be one of those things that you have to ..... but hate to tolerate. Commercial is the worst. Through the years, as some of my clients have grown from small companys to large, I've sometimes had to find reasons to let them go. One example ..... I had a company that started out simply, by providing document copying service. Just a few copy machines. Through the years the company grew. The owner came up with the idea of providing in-house copying for giant corporations like Gruman Aircraft, among others located in NY City. He leased copy machines and set up sort of "mini " companies inside these giant corporations, providing document pickup and delivery to various buildings and departments. This graduated into photo copying diagrams and plans on huge sheets of paper. This graduated into hand delivering documents and correspondence to other branches and suppliers and doing humongus mailings and thence to package mailings. As the company grew over a period of 8 to 10 years, so did their security needs. Hundreds of copy machines, Automated, and computerized mailing machines. Loading dock security. I was spending sometimes days at the locations trying to trouble shoot and do addons. I stuck with it because the owner had become more of a friend than a customer. Ultimately, he sold the business to a much larger company for millions of dollars. I saw this as an opportunity and as soon as the new owers took over, I sent them a cancellation notice. The alarm company who took it over thought I was crazy to give up such a lucrative account. I was making up to $5000.00 a year just on service and upgrades. But, to me, it had become a burden I no longer wanted to deal with. Trying to get department managers to maintain security and train their new employees about arming and codewords. No one would respond when the alarm would trip. Placing skids of material in front of motion detectors. Plastic wrap in the warehouse blowing around in front of the PIR's when the heaters would come on. Then covering the PIR's so they wouldn't trip. Constantly! What a relief it was to get back to what I liked the best.

Yep, me too.

Got in about 10:00 pm.

RHC: Hahaha....yeah how true that all is. I've had the same experience with a company that makes bomb and security equipment that is sold all around the world. Over the years they have all become more like friends than customers. I've even tried to get them to go with other alarm companies over the years with my encouragment, but as soon as they got horrendous quotes to make a few changes, (one of which I made by simply dialing in to the panel), they decided it was wise to stay with me. I also have the home systems for all the executives and a lot of their workers, and only took the business system at the beginning as a favour (PC 1555 that grew to a 70 zone PC 5020 over the years with five partitions and 8 keypads etc.....). So its kind of tough to abandon them. I did have Chubb call me up once wishing to take the system over. Once I described it's complexity, they said they weren't interested....can't even give the damn thing away...:)

Just gonna have to grin and bear it until they build a new building at which time I'm gone. My forte is small to medium sized residential systems and that is where I'm going to try to maintain my account base.

I did manage to give away one of my early commercial accounts that sold fitness equipment. They were always doing stupid things like pushing pallets of hardware up against motion detectors, smashing door contacts and NEVER heeding my advice on preventing false alarms. Once I gave them away, they became so pissed at me they refused to pay $300 they owed me. I still figure I got the best end of the bargain....:)))

Isn't business strange sometimes....:))

Yeah, I lost a couple of nice commercial accounts to a company that couldn't figure out how to take it over. The local managers like me and the service I provided. The big national that took them over nationally spent months figuring out how to handle them, charged them thousands of dollars in service visits, and tripled their monthly costs, and failed to provide one of the services I was providing. (I'm still friendly with the local managers) Their systems were working fine with no errors and no problem zones. Dealer code was defaulted. The local managers asked me about it, and I told them they were in good standing with me. I would be glad to do the reprogram for the new company for free. All they had to do was call me. I could have had them running with their new company in minutes without even leaving my office.

Its pretty funny.

All that because the president of one company plays golf with the president of the other company. LOL.

ked me about it,

And I'll bet the president of the buying company never lost a game to the president of the selling company.