**HONOURING COMMITMENTS**
"This post is very unfortunate and frankly, misleading. I'm Terry Cord, the owner and founder of DrainWorks. The same Terry referenced in the post by Stacey of Bloor West.
To begin with, we aren't sure who Stacey is, as we never had dealings with a Stacey on this project. I'll assume Stacey is married to the customer in question, Dr. John Brummel.
We were completely open with our recommendations and pricing throughout our dealings with this client. There was never an issue with the work that we did perform up to that point. In fact, the client asked to have the service call that was owed to DrainWorks reduced $100 in order to accept the proposed work in question - which DrainWorks agreed to. We were very patient and flexible in trying to schedule a firm date for the contracted work with the client, but after 11 days of indecision, the client chose not to proceed. Deciding not to continue is any clients right, and we respect that fact. When you decide to secure our time and take us out of the market, and then choose not to proceed by canceling a signed contract, there is a small cost to that.
The reason we have to receive a nominal non-refundable deposit is quite simple: We commit to paying our employees - the most skilled in the business - a salary rather than a "sell more so you can make more" commission. We do this because we know salaried professionals provide a better quality of service, and we believe that commission-based plumbing companies (the vast majority of them) are sales oriented which isn't in the clients best interest.
When we accept a contract, our time is blocked off for that customers project and we can no longer offer it to anyone else. The deposit simply helps us partially offset the lost time and service opportunity our company experienced as a result of that signed agreement being broken.
Lastly, we received a single star rating by this customer, yet if you look at Homestars ranking criteria, we met three of the five mandatory items for stars, easily. I realize this star is actually a reflection of the fact that the client wasn't happy about losing their agreed upon non refundable deposit, but we endured being spoken down to more than once and had a great deal of our time wasted. Plus, contrary to what's written in this post, the written indication to us from the client was to cancel, not postpone for a future day. To suggest otherwise is simply misleading.
As a guy who takes incredible pride in the fact that we have worked our tails off for 12 years, this review is offensive to me. I have no issue with any client posting feedback, as this forum exists for that purpose. Frankly, we've benefited from Homestars reviews many times. I do however, object to any review that isn't at the very least, fair. For the past seven years straight, my company has won the Consumer's Choice top Award for Drain Service Excellence in the GTA. I only mention this because it speaks to the fact that day-in and day-out, we work very hard to impress our clients. This one star rating simply isn't a fair reflection of our brand or work ethic, and I just wanted to let you know my thoughts with my reply. Thanks. - Terry
Reply created 11 Oct 2007
