People don't appreciate small businesses and treat them like shit

[toepick]

I'm a small business

I have to smile and be nice to customers of course but most of them are cunts

People just take, take, take
Don't appreciate the effort that goes into a good small business and will think nothing of not paying when they should

I hear you OP, but boundaries are the way forward.

I am in a field where lots of people like to ask me a 'quick question' (no such thing) . They seem to think their 'quick questions' don't count and therefore don't need to be paid for . I now have a strict rule of only advising when booked through work ,and send them the details of my fees and how to book an appointment. I often get 😲 looks back but I don't care.

I would have to agree..that's why we are closing as of next month. Just can't do it anymore

I think if your attitude is that all of our customers are awful, then I'm afraid I'm not sure it's them, but is it you?

I run a small business. I have some great clients, and some less great clients. I completely agree with others re boundaries - I don't respond to emails out of hours unless there's a really good reason. I don't mind the people email me out of hours they - they email me when it's convenient for them, not me.

I also frequent a lot of small businesses. Some are great. Some are less so. One I've decided never to step foot in again because they sound like OP - they seem to hate all of their customers.

My thoughts exactly 😂

Yep tell us what the main issue is with how people get out of paying

I ran my own business for around 11 years and estimate that around 70% of my clients were, indeed, cunts. They would query my pricing (which was benchmarked regularly within the sector) and say things like; 'I could do it cheaper myself' - to which my response was ALWAYS 'Go on then'. Generally speaking, I'd turn down any work where a potential client quibbled early on about the cost because I KNEW there'd be issues come payment time.

And, it was ALWAYS the high net worth individuals and fancy high-end corporate clients who fucked me around taking ages to pay their bills, too.

Customers in general are cunts and have no respect.

I've been self employed and customer facing for 20years and this absolutely isn't my experience. So it's either how you present yourself, how you advertise what you do or where you advertise what you do (in general the clients I get through SM are far lower calibre than clients via word of mouth/trad adverts etc). My money is on the problem being you, because the contempt you have for your clients is really obvious, and they will realise.

Clearly, some customers can behave badly. But you didn’t really start your business for the greater good of mankind, did you? You were hoping to make pots of money out of the “cunts”.

I'm the flip side... I'm wary of small businesses because they often don't come with the guarantees of the larger ones. I'd prefer to pay slightly more for say, Amazon than go to Bob in his garage down the road. I've been screwed over too many times by cowboys and scammers.

The only exception here are window/conservatory companies, Internet companies and energy companies. All of them will screw you any chance they get.

Sorry OP, I do get it though...

I have a small business I'd say 80% of people are nice and great customers. Then you have people who are outright rude, then some who are nice but hopeless and need so much help and support to book etc.

You sound very unlucky with your customers!!

It's interesting that you dislike people contacting you outside of business hours.

I use small businesses a lot, particularly at this time of year, and I usually contact them re personalisation or queries very late in the evening or in the middle of the night, because that's what's convenient for me. I don't expect a message back until business hours. Never considered that people would find me rude.

I run my own small business and my experience is generally nothing like this.

My clients are lovely. They don't take the piss, they pay me on time, they understand my policies and don't complain if cancelling last minute means they still need to pay me. However I also show leniency if they have genuine reasons for cancelling or re-arranging, because I find that means they show me the same in return.

I'm firm with my boundaries though and have no problem dropping people who take the piss.

I have a small business and most of my customers are great, some are excellent but there are an increasing amount of unpleasant people who behave badly.
The requests for discounts are easily dismissed but it's the people who purposely destroy things so they can return them outwith the returns period, people who claim they haven't received their parcel when there is a tracking photo of their house, or people who say they received an empty box when the parcels are literally weighed the whole journey and the seals haven't been broken on tracking photo. They email at 7pm at night and then again at 9pm furious that they haven't had an answer when they get an auto reply with our business hours.
It's truly exhausting and sometimes it feels like they're all cunts, but they're really not, just some who probably get their food spat in at restaurants.

Yes, this rings very true. There is a small business in my town that I used to try to support, but the owner spends a significant amount of time on her FB page complaining about "Karens" and I'm not up for supporting nasty misogynistic attacks on women. (The business is such that probably over 90% of the customers are female.)

Dh and I run a small business and the majority of our clients are really nice. But what frustrates me is putting hours into quotes/measuring etc, then never hearing back. We spent nearly 4 hours last week with 1 client who took hours of our time up and have clearly gone elsewhere with our ideas. I had a lady phone up last week demanding to have a copy of the measurements we'd taken - and I knew damned well that it was to price/compare online so I repeatedly said that they were for our use only. She got extremely abusive in the end, and I've since blocked her number. I'm not spending hours of my time measuring for you so you can buy cheap shit online thanks.

Drives me mad and you do get days where you think why the fuck do we bother.

What’s wrong with getting quotes and then comparing prices?

Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when you’re spending a lot of money on your home?

Do you phone them?

Or do you send an email?

The latter is fine. You send email at your convenience. I read it and respond at mine. Which will be during my public business hours, as previously stated. That's not to say those are the only hours I work, but they're the hours I accept client contact, just to allow me to do some work undisturbed and yes, enjoy those lovely boundaries I set.

10pm phone calls are, frankly, obnoxious unless you're family or close friends.

I have no issue with people getting quotes, we do the same. But we always have the decency to phone or email saying it's too expensive/not what we're looking for. And what makes me rage is that we can't compete with online retailers... we have a retail showroom, spend thousands of £s on display items/pattern books etc for people to browse and then fuck off and buy cheaper online. It's just rude to use a small independent for that reason IMO.

I'm a customer. I don't care what your size is. If you treat me like this, then I'm your EX customer. Perhaps you aren't suited to business. Or maybe I should treat all small businesses as c just because it applies to you?

Disgusting and misogynistic- I hope I never accidentally buy anything from you.

I call customers cunts because when I am a customer. I'm the best customer ever. I pay asking price and wouldn't even disrespect you and ask for a discount especially if you're small time.

They think you're running a charity. F off.

In all honesty I don't think you are in the right job.

If you think people are cunts and you choose to work in a "people business" then you are not going to be happy, and you would be better off finding a job that makes you happy, or at least not angry. There are lots of jobs out there and nobody is forcing you to do this one.

Obviously people should pay what they owe, but often they don't and dealing with that is a big part of running a business, regardless of size.

I've run my own small business for just over 20 years. It's never been as bad as it is these days with potential clients expecting advice/services for nothing, and existing clients fighting back against entirely reasonable price increases, i.e. 5% this year after keeping prices unchanged for the last 10 years! Also clients wanting "scope creep", where they want more than the agreed scope of work but don't want to pay for the extra time. I'm also seeing more and more potential "clients" thinking that I can do the work for free because "it's only an hour" or "it's only a phone call", and they think that "other clients" who are bigger/richer should pay my wages so they're entitled to my time for nothing!

All my work and fees are agreed in writing beforehand, but even then, more clients than ever argue about the invoice, even though they don't argue about the quality/speed of work, they just feel entitled to discounts or freebies because of "the cost of living crisis" or whatever excuse they come up with, i.e. car needed a big repair bill. Not my problem, pay the price agreed! I have increased costs of living due to COL crisis too and my car needs repairs paying for too!

Yes, I'm happy with out of hours emails as I can choose when to respond, usually next working day. But, yes, out of hours phone calls are out of order, a client once phoned me at 11pm at night waking us up. Even worse are callers in person when you run a business from home. One utter arsehole turned up at our house on Christmas morning to drop off some paperwork and then went on to want a chat about something - all the while OH was trying to juggle preparing the lunch with playing with DS and his new toys. Some people just have no respect for boundaries. Needless to say, I soon started working from a rented office instead and future clients never know my home address nor phone number anymore!

This is very good advice OP