Mothball Dispute, Area Rug Sale, Rug Cleaning and Repair, Tapestries
CategoriesRug Ideas
During the past couple of days, we were busy with selling area rugs, getting some Oriental carpets for cleaning and repair, and selling two tapestries. A customer had given us 13 rugs for cleaning and repair from Malibu, a very beautiful city close to Los Angeles. When the gentleman and his wife came in to pick up their rugs, they looked at few of them from the back and touched the face of the couple of the rugs. They liked the cleanness and softness of the rugs. I also showed them how we had fixed the fringes and had 
secured them in a way that the knots would not come off. They liked the way the fringes were secured. They said that they would like to store few of these rugs and do not want to use them for a while. I mentioned that we could do this and gave them a one page rug storage tips we had. They agreed that we do the packing. We did few hours of work yesterday, vacuumed each rug, took its digital high resolution photos and put mothballs inside each rug. We Rolled each rug and secured it with rope. Then we used special type of heavy duty paper since plastics of any kind is not good for the rug storage. We taped each rug and then printed the photo with the size and taped it to the rug with the care instructions. They could not believe how professional this job was done. We only charged them $20 for each piece. A couple of the pieces were big, but we charged them $20 per rug regardless of the size. It took us a full half day. I did not mind doing a first class job to please my customers.
The husband called me this morning around 8:30 complaining about the smell of the mothballs and said that I had promised to use undetectable mothballs without any odor. I did not have such a mothball and I had not promised to use something that I did not have. I told all this very nicely to the husband who seemed very angry over the phone. I was very nice to him and did not lose my temper at all. I believe it is my job to be nice to people and my customers. He said he would talk to his wife and would call me back. He called me back later and said he wanted me to take the mothballs out and I said I would be back in my store after 11:00 am. and toled him bring the rugs to our store.
The wife and the husband brought the rugs and I helped them bring the rugs inside our rug gallery. I said when do you want them back because I have to spend few more hours to open each package and unwrap it, open the ropes, spread the rug on the floor, vacuum the rug and take the mothballs out. Then wrap it and do the whole process again. I would have to charge you $100 for all seven pieces. The man got angry and shouted at me:”who do you think you are? You think you are from East LA (East Los Angeles)? I will make you do this for free. I have an attorney who is very expensive and he will make you do this and you will have to pay for that very expensive attorney. I told him nicely, politely and calmly that I have done my job once. To do the whole job all over again, I will need few hours of my time and a helper and materials and charging $100 for all this would not be a lot of money. He shouted at me again and talked about how his professional attorney would make me this job free of charge. I said OK sir, if this is what you think you should do, then I do not stop you. I helped him took the rugs inside his car and in the trunk and he and his wife left!! The man was so angry. I hope he gets home safely. Here I post the photos of the rugs in the packings with the photos and the instructions. I thought I did my job right, and did not promise something I could not deliver. I also tried to treat them nicely regardless of the nasty language and behavior of the husband.
KhosrowSobhe
www.RugIdea.com
310-770-9085
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