When it goes wrong
The mistake will be forgiven. The silence afterwards will not.
The short answer
The damage is almost never the mistake. It is the gap between them noticing and you answering. Answer the same day, fix it before deciding whose fault it is, and it becomes the story they tell.
Sunday evening, a text with a photograph attached. A post has moved. Or there is a mark on the drive that was not there, or the gate catches on the slab, or the neighbor says the line is over by an inch.
Two instincts arrive together. One is to explain why it is not your fault. The other is to say nothing until you have worked out what you are going to do. Both of them are about to cost you more than the fix.
The mistake is not the expensive part
Things go wrong on every job, and everybody knows that including the person who sent the photograph. Ground moves. Timber twists. Somebody leans a trailer on a new fence. Nobody has ever decided a tradesman was bad because something went wrong once.
What they do not know yet is what you are like when it does. And this is the only moment in the whole job where they can find out something about you that could not have been arranged in advance. The quote could have been written by anybody. The photographs could have been of anybody’s work. This part cannot be staged.
Answer before you know the answer
This is the whole of it. The reason for the four days is almost never avoidance — it is that people wait until they know what they are going to do. Working that out takes a couple of days, and by the time the reply is ready it is arriving into a silence that has already said something worse.
Answering does not require a solution. It requires a time. “Got your message — that is not right and I will sort it. I am on a job until Thursday, so Thursday afternoon, if that works?” Sent within the hour, from the van, badly typed. The typing does not matter. The hour does.
| What arrives | What usually happens | What to send within the hour |
|---|---|---|
| A photo of a post that has moved | Two days of working out whether it is the ground or the concrete, then a long message explaining the ground. | “That should not have moved. I will come and look Thursday and put it right.” The explanation can wait until you are standing next to it. |
| “The gate is catching.” | “They usually settle in the first few weeks” — which is true, and reads as a brush-off. | “I will come and ease it. Thursday afternoon or Saturday morning, whichever suits.” |
| “There is a mark on the drive.” | Silence, because you are not sure it was you. | “I will have a look on Thursday and we will sort it out.” Whether it was you is a separate question and it is not urgent. |
| A neighbor says the line is wrong | A message to the customer explaining what the deeds say. | “I will come and measure it with you both there.” Nothing else, in writing, at this stage. |
Fix it before you decide whose fault it is
These are two separate questions and almost everybody answers them in the wrong order. Fault first turns the next conversation into an argument — and it is an argument the customer cannot win, because you know about fences and they do not.
So they stop having it with you. They have it with the neighbours instead, where they can win it, and where the version that gets repeated is theirs. You were right about the ground and it cost you the next four jobs on that road.
Fix it first. Then, standing next to the finished repair, say what happened, once, plainly, with no defence attached — “that corner sits on made-up ground, so I have put a longer post in”. Half the time you will not need to say anything, because a thing that has been put right stops being a grievance.
The five moves that cost more than the fix
| The move | Why it costs more |
|---|---|
| Arguing in writing | A written argument is a document, and a document can be shown to people. Nothing you type will read as calmly as you meant it. |
| Offering money before offering a fix | It reads as an admission and it is usually not what they want. Almost everybody would rather have the thing right than have some of their money back. |
| Taking the work back out | Whatever the rights of it, you are now the person who came and removed a fence. There is no version of that story where you sound reasonable. |
| Going quiet to let it cool down | It does not cool down. It sets. Every day of silence is a day they spend deciding what kind of person you are, with no new information. |
| Explaining the technical reason at length | Length reads as defence. The same fact in one sentence, said after the repair, reads as expertise. |
One unresolved complaint is not one lost customer. It is one lost customer who lives on a road full of the people your next jobs were going to come from, and who now has a specific story with your name in it. That is the whole reason the first hour is worth more than the fix.
Where the line is, when it stops being fair
Everything above assumes the complaint is reasonable, and almost all of them are. Fixing first and sorting out fault later is cheap for anything small, and it is the right default precisely because arguing costs more than easing a gate ever will.
It stops being the right default when the list grows. You come out on the Thursday, you put the post right, and by the following week the fence has become a gate that was never in the quote, and then a strip of the lawn. That is not a fault any more. That is a second job, and the reason your quote named what was not included is so that this conversation has something to stand on.
Say it once, without heat, and without withdrawing the goodwill: “The post was mine and it is sorted. The gate was not in the job — happy to price it, and it would not be much while I am here.” You have not refused anything, you have not argued, and you have moved it from a grievance back to a piece of work.
If money is being held back, proportion is the thing to hold on to. A snag worth an hour is not a reason to hold an invoice worth two weeks, and saying so calmly — “hold back what the gate is worth and pay the rest” — is often the sentence that ends it, because it is obviously fair. What is actually permitted differs by country, and if it goes further than that sentence it belongs with somebody qualified where you trade. This site does not do legal advice, and it will not be suggesting you charge anybody interest.
One quiet habit makes all of this easier and it costs nothing: photograph the repair when you finish it, the same way you photograph the buried parts of a job. Write down the date you came out and what was agreed, in a notebook. Not to win an argument with — you are not going to have one in writing — but so that six weeks later you can remember accurately, which is more than most people in a dispute can do.
The job that went wrong is the one they talk about
A job where everything went to plan gives somebody nothing to say. It was fine. The fence is up. There is no story in it, which is why the best-run jobs generate the fewest recommendations.
A job where something went wrong and you were there on Thursday with the right tools gives them a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, in which you are the person who turned up. That is worth more than the job was, and it is available to you on exactly the day it feels least like it.
The short version
- Reply within the hour. A day, not a diagnosis.
- Never work out the fix before you answer — answer, then work it out.
- Fix it before deciding whose fault it is. They are separate questions.
- Say what happened once, after the repair, standing next to it.
- Never argue in writing. Never offer money first.
- Never go quiet. Silence is the only part that is genuinely unforgivable.
- Finish with “anything else you spot, call me.”
- Serious damage or an insurer: stop, and call the insurer.
- When the list grows, it is a second job — price it, do not argue it.
- Photograph the repair and note the date. Not to argue with; to remember.
None of this is about being sorry. It is about being reachable on the one day it matters, which is the day everything you have said about yourself either turns out to be true or does not.