My wife blow-dries and straightens her hair in the bathroom at the vanity about once every two weeks. She puts a towel down over the sink but there's always tons of hair that gets around it anyway. We had a very slow drain there for a while and half a bottle of Draino wasn't doing anything, so last weekend I snaked it, pulled out clumps of hair (mostly hers, I'm pretty sure) that had accumulated over probably 6-12 months, and now it drains real quick.
Yesterday I had to be a diplomat:
I had three estimates on my fence repair. Let's call them A, B, and C. A's price was lower than B's so I called A and told the secretary "Let's go ahead with the work." She said "OK, what we do is put you on a waiting list and our guy will get back to you within 7-10 days, just leave a message when I forward you." She forwarded me, I left the message, and that was that. Never heard back.
Then a few days later C came out, gave me an estimate, agreed to match A's price and said he could start in a couple days. I said great, he seemed a bit more legit than A anyway, so we signed the agreement and I paid the first 1/3rd up front. He was supposed to start today.
Yesterday I got home from work and A's truck was in my driveway, and his guy was out back already starting to work. I went back there and said "Hold up, we never signed anything, I never paid you anything, and I've already signed with C." So then the guy put A on the phone for me and he said we had a verbal agreement (based on the voicemail I guess?) and that he might have to charge me anyway for sending his guy out.
I wasn't about to pay that but I felt bad about the misunderstanding, plus switching to A meant I might get the work done earlier, and the guy who was there was very professional, so I checked with C to see if I could cancel and get a refund on my up-front payment. I had to be very apologetic etc. and I felt bad about that too, and I detected a note of mournfulness in his voice, but he agreed to refund my money without a problem. Then I came back out and gave A's guy the thumbs up to continue the work. A apologized for the misunderstanding, since it was after all his fault, and had his guy give me the paper work order to sign, and from then on it's been smooth sailing. Hopefully he'll finish up today.
But boy do I hate being in the middle of situations like that! Who the heck sends people out to do work without anything written down and without any up-front payment?!?! That's like a small claims lawsuit waiting to happen.