Leadership Power

February may be when Valentine’s Day is, but too often there’s not a lot of love sent towards contractors in general, especially when a local news station sets up a sting operation targeting your industry!

Now a sting operation set up by a TV news station sounds like a good idea, but it’s not often fair.

Yes, there are still too many unscrupulous contractors out there who take advantage of the unsuspecting customer. But too often, the way these shows set up the problem the contractor is asked to uncover is equally unscrupulous.

For instance, the show will take a furnace that may be 25 years old or more and rig up a problem. The problem is the unit is statistically reaching the end of its useful lifetime and very unlikely to be as efficient and green as anything that’s been manufactured in the last 10 years. In that case the tech is obligated to offer both a repair and a replace option. Unless…

I grew up in my family’s plumbing, heating, and cooling company and among my earliest memories are my Dad getting calls in the middle of the night from people with heating emergencies—a homeowner whose furnace had quit or a bakery where they needed the steam from the boilers for their baking. When this happened, rather than leave me at the house, he’d take me with him.

I remember it being fun to go on those calls. The bakers liked me and would feed me bagels, cookies, and cake while my dad toiled to get their boilers up and running. Not so much fun for my Dad, or me, later, when it was my turn to do it!