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It's funny we've thought about doing this in a startup I run in the real estate industry where most of our customers are realtors. Unfortunately it's not alway

It's funny we've thought about doing this in a startup I run in the real estate industry where most of our customers are realtors. Unfortunately it's not always easy to arbitrarily raise your prices for the difficult customers because they complain even more and ask "where does it say that there will be a charge or fee for this on your website?" I always thought it would be nice to have an extra line on my pricing page that stated "Difficult Customer Fee: $TBD" :)

dwj 14y ago
The other issue is that many of my good customers have done some of the things on the 'difficult customer' list. You can't easily pigeon hole customers as 'bad'. I have only had one REALLY bad customer - he tended to swear in his email (and his password was "fuckyou"), he used various aliases, and lots of people on forums said he basically scammed them. Also he was very rude and dumb. Anyways, I decided to charge him about 5x the normal rate (and he was too dumb to notice). This is the only time I've ever done this. Anyway, he paid for a year or two and then (thankfully) went out of business. However even my best (and nicest) customers do some of the things here...sometimes they give me a big long list of questions at their first contact, or persistently call if they have what they think is an urgent problem or question. Usually as long as they're not rude I don't have a problem with it, and they're normally pretty happy if I send an email saying I'll reply after the weekend or whatever.
measure2xcut1x 14y ago
I also run a business with realtors as customers and I know exactly what you are talking about, some are definitely toxic. That said, I'm sure it's not just a realtor thing but it can seem that way. We try to detect/filter them in the sales process. Unfortunately saying "I don't thing our product is a good fit for you" invariably seems to make them want it even more.
- BryanB55 14y ago
  Glad I'm not alone. Not that I'm saying all realtors are this way but we get a lot that have the "my way is the only way" mentality. It doesn't help that the real estate industry in general can tend to be a bit old fashioned. I would say 90% of all of the MLS systems I've seen require ONLY Internet Explorer in order to use it! I've never looked at any official demographics of realtors but all of our customers tend to be woman in their 40-60's that use AOL as their email address and Internet Explorer 7.

dwj 14y ago

The other issue is that many of my good customers have done some of the things on the 'difficult customer' list. You can't easily pigeon hole customers as 'bad'. I have only had one REALLY bad customer - he tended to swear in his email (and his password was "fuckyou"), he used various aliases, and lots of people on forums said he basically scammed them. Also he was very rude and dumb. Anyways, I decided to charge him about 5x the normal rate (and he was too dumb to notice). This is the only time I've ever done this. Anyway, he paid for a year or two and then (thankfully) went out of business. However even my best (and nicest) customers do some of the things here...sometimes they give me a big long list of questions at their first contact, or persistently call if they have what they think is an urgent problem or question. Usually as long as they're not rude I don't have a problem with it, and they're normally pretty happy if I send an email saying I'll reply after the weekend or whatever.

measure2xcut1x 14y ago

I also run a business with realtors as customers and I know exactly what you are talking about, some are definitely toxic. That said, I'm sure it's not just a realtor thing but it can seem that way. We try to detect/filter them in the sales process. Unfortunately saying "I don't thing our product is a good fit for you" invariably seems to make them want it even more.

BryanB55 14y ago
Glad I'm not alone. Not that I'm saying all realtors are this way but we get a lot that have the "my way is the only way" mentality. It doesn't help that the real estate industry in general can tend to be a bit old fashioned. I would say 90% of all of the MLS systems I've seen require ONLY Internet Explorer in order to use it! I've never looked at any official demographics of realtors but all of our customers tend to be woman in their 40-60's that use AOL as their email address and Internet Explorer 7.