I didn’t want to call an exterminator because I don’t like the thought of the harsh chemicals they use, but I figured that I just couldn’t share my house with these insects anymore, so I picked a name out of the yellow pages, checked them out online and made contact.

They responded via email, gave me a price and told me what day they would be coming…Thursday March 25.

On Tuesday they let me know that they had double booked and would be here Friday morning instead.

No big deal, I work from home, I told them.

So this morning (Friday) I’m checking my email and I have a message from the exterminator telling me they’d be here around 10 am and that me, my kids and my pets would have to be gone for a few hours during the treatment and a few hours afterwards.

That email was sent at 9:30pm last night.

My husband and I are sharing a car today, I work from home, I have two children under the age of 4 and an indoor cat.

Now, keep in mind that one of the email exchanges we had was about my concern about the chemicals that would be used as I have young children and an indoor cat and all I was told was the name of the chemical and that when applied by a professional it is very safe.

So why didn’t he tell me at that time that we would need to be gone during this process? Holy bad customer service, Batman!

I’ll tell you, this company has lost a customer. First the double-booking thing and then the no-notice thing. Maybe I didn’t ask the right questions, but I think someone in a business like this, while they likely assumed that I would know we’d have to leave the house for the day, should have a list of guidelines and information sent to their customers before they treat for whatever pest they’re going to be eliminating.

This man is clearly a solopreneur and he’s probably a very busy one. He should have a virtual assistant fielding his calls and emails. This person could systematically send an email with information to each customer to avoid this problem, which must have led to some loss of business. I can’t be the only one who can’t pick up and leave at the drop of a hat!

I’m sure we all make assumptions in our businesses, but it’s a dangerous thing to do.

This guy obviously assumes that everyone knows they have to be gone while he’s treating, but he’s wrong. I didn’t know and I’m really smart.

Could you be doing something like this in your line of work?

I know I’ve done it. I’ve assumed before that when I start writing optimized content for someone that they will know what keywords they want me to optimize for. Not always the case.

Part of my job as a writer and part of Buddy’s job as an exterminator, is to educate our clients. Whether we like it or not, it’s important that we explain our process before we start.

I suggest you sit down with a piece of paper and a pen then write down your process from start to finish. Write down everything no matter how obvious it should be.

I mean, if you’re a painter, don’t assume that someone will know they need to take down the old wallpaper before you show up to paint.

Identify the gaps, the items that you should be discussing with your clients before you start work, and document them. Put together an information sheet…something that you can send to people before they work with you.

If the exterminator had done that, I’d be packing up my things now and headed to Nanny’s house for the weekend. But he didn’t, so instead I’m sitting here angry, writing this blog post, preparing to wipe down all of the old ant bait and put down some fresh.

I’m going to take my chances with the ants because I think I might end up better off than with all those chemicals anyway. At least for now. And if I do decide to call an exterminator it will be somebody different. Call me crazy, but when I’m leaving my house with a stranger in it for hours with harsh chemicals I want someone I can trust. And sorry, but two strikes is more than enough to be out in a game like this.

Moral of the story…never make assumptions about what your customers know or don’t know because you will be proven wrong at some point! Bet on it.

Plagiarism is low, people. I know for a fact that nobody would stand up and argue that fact and I bet I’d have a hard time finding someone who would admit to being a plagiarizer. That’s because they would not be popular.

Dictionary.com defines plagiarism as:

“the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.”

You caught that, right? Plagiarism does not just apply to content, but taking someone else’s idea and passing it off as yours also counts. And do you know what plagiarism is?

Blatant theft.

When someone takes someone else’s idea and claims to have been the one who thought it up, well…that person doesn’t realize how small this world really is. That person is also not flattering the original concept creator. I can assure you that the person who had the idea in the first place is pissed off.

People. Stop taking other people’s ideas. It isn’t cool and you will be caught and your reputation will be in the toilet. Trust me. Karma is real and what goes around comes around.

If you can’t come up with a creative idea, nobody is going to fault you for that. Seek help. Call me! I help entrepreneurs with their creative brainstorming and I have enough creativity for both of us and some to spare.

It’s way more satisfying to come up with something on your own than it is to steal someone else’s intellectual property. Plus it’s way more legal.

If you contract me as your creative consultant and you pay me to come up with your ideas, I won’t tell anyone. We can pretend those ideas are yours. Part of your payment goes towards keeping my mouth shut.

So there you have it. You know how I (and anyone else who invests time and energy into creative thought) feel about plagiarism. People who do it suck. Don’t go there. Any money you invest in hiring someone to help with your creative needs will cost less than the damage done to your reputation in the long run when you’re caught.

I put my $2.25 in the machine and pressed the big Pepsi button. The bottle that I was dispensed was not Pepsi, though. It was a bottle of water. I was not happy.

Where I live, I’m lucky enough to have great water from my own well, so I don’t buy water unless I really need to. I don’t like paying for my water. I especially don’t like paying more than $2 for a bottle of water that I didn’t want or need.

You see, I have no problem paying that for a bottle of Pepsi because I enjoy it but I don’t have the recipe for good ole Brad’s Drink.

What does this have to do with operating a small business? Well…besides the fact that you people need to make sure your pop machines are dispensing the right things…there’s a lesson on value in here somewhere.

I was talking with my good (virtual) friend Sally the other day about a prospective client she had who told her she shouldn’t charge so much for “simple administrative tasks”. I immediately said, “If it’s so simple let her do it herself then.”

Sally and I chatted about this, and really, when it comes down to it, the services we offer as virtual assistants or writers or house cleaners, are all optional. If people want me to write for them or someone like Sally to take care of the admin needs of their businesses, they have to pay for our expertise and experience. It’s not like we’re doing life saving brain surgery here. You can write your own articles or manage your own social networking plans, but if you think someone can do those things better than you, you do have to pay up.

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that people can’t see the value in what I do as a writer or what I used to do as a virtual assistant, but people seem to have no trouble paying for a bottle of water. Bottled water, people. What would our ancestors say about us buying water?!

If you can read and write, you don’t need me to write your marketing materials for you. But if you think I can do a better job than you, why would you tell me I charge too much? (Yes, I’ve been told this before, just like Sally was told before she wrote this great blog post.)

You buy bottled water because you don’t have to bother to pack your own canteen for a road trip, or because your own water tastes funny. But if there’s drinkable water coming from your taps, you really don’t need it.

I have a feeling though, that most people don’t try to haggle over the price of Evian when they get to the counter.

Why is it, then, that people feel they can haggle with a service provider like they’re at a trading post or a yard sale?

Anyone?

(I want to preface this by saying that I do not intend to offend any East Labobians. As far as I know, East Labobia is a fictional country.)

I remember when I was a kid, I loved reading Archie comics. It’s as clear to me as if it were yesterday, summer days sitting under a tree reading about Archie’s twisted love triangle. It was then that I learned it sucks to live in Canada when you want to order stuff from magazines or books.

All the little giveaways and freebies throughout the comics were so cool but “Not available in Canada”. Hmph. No Sea Monkeys for me. It was like this big huge celebration if I ever found something that I could order that would be shipped to the Great White North. (Keep in mind here that I’m not 30 yet, this wasn’t the 1800s or anything when it probably would have been easier to get stuff across the border cause I don’t think there was a Customs thing back then. Or a border? Anyway, I digress.)

If you live in Canada (or Hawaii cause that state seems to be excluded from everything that Canada’s excluded from in my experiences) you’ve probably had this frustration tons of times yourself. Old Navy – great stuff on their website! There’s a store ten minutes from me. They have these great online deals all the time, but only within the US. That’s fine I guess. It’s retail. I’ve grown to expect that type of thing.

Here’s what I don’t get – how is it possible that web based stuff limits Canadians? Hello! It’s the Internet. Why does it matter where my IP address is?

I looked into Google Checkout or something or other a month or so ago because a client mentioned they would prefer to pay that way. I’m all about making it easy for people to pay so I looked into it. I couldn’t find a drop down option for Canada. There was the US and the UK, I believe. Funny, I bet if I wanted an AdWords account there wouldn’t be a problem taking my Canadian money.

Then there’s Basecamp. My online collaboration tool of choice. I recommend to everyone. But when I looked into signing up as an affiliate there was nothing there for Canadians. Funny again. They are really accommodating when it comes to taking a couple hundred dollars each month from me even though I’m in Canada but I can’t make some extra money by recommending it to people? Hmmm.

Let’s see…oh yes. Ring Central. The company I use for my Virtual PBX needs (fancy term for telephone system with extensions and stuff.) I had to update my credit card information and their interface doesn’t include the proper fields for a Canadian address. I had to pick up the phone and wait for a representative.

See a pattern here? These places don’t mind doing business with Canadians for certain things, but it seems like there’s a bit of laziness or some huge oversights there.

One time I was creating an online flyer for a real estate agent and the site allowed me to create a flyer for a Canadian address, but they didn’t have Newfoundland on the dropdown list. A whole province was missing. I had to call to see if they could add it and then they put the wrong provincial abbreviation on there and I don’t know if it ever got fixed.

Finally, these final examples boggle my mind the most.

I would love to have the option to watch Grey’s Anatomy or Desperate Housewives (my favoritest shows) online if I were to miss them (don’t know if Canadians can get Tivo yet) but even though we get the big US networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, etc., when I go to the ABC website to watch my shows, it says that I can’t cause I’m in Canada.

The other day I went to check out Pandora which is supposedly the coolest online music thing ever, to see what it’s all about. I wish I could tell you, but oh wait. Since my IP address is in Canada I don’t have the option of getting past the “So sorry, we value your business” crap to see what it’s all about.

Wasn’t there some Free Trade agreement or something signed between the US and Canada? What’s all this about? Really. Everyone buys stuff online – we’re living in a Global Economy. Why do these American companies feel like it’s okay (or smart?) to rule out an entire country and a neighboring-closest-ally country at that!?

Anyway, I’m almost finished of my coffee now and I’m all riled up. Any Canadians who feel my pain? Can you think of other examples?

To my US friends, did you know that we Canadians are living with these frustrations? Have you ever tried to send away for something or sign up for something only to learn it was not available in the US? I really doubt it, but would love to hear if it’s ever happened.

PS: Dear Old Navy, Google, Basecamp, Ring Central, Pandora and ABC.com, I purposely did not include links back to your sites because I don’t believe that Canadians really exist to you people unless they are directly sending you money. So there!

(There, that oghta show ‘em how darn mad I am. )

Let me set the story up a little bit.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a lead through my website’s contact form. I called the person back and we had a great discussion. When I asked him if he’d be speaking with some other VAs he told me he didn’t have the time and wanted to get started. So, I emailed him a copy of my agreement with the understanding that he would forward more project details and we would get underway.

I didn’t receive a reply, I followed up a couple times and he finally said that he found another VA that charges substantially less than I do, and she wowed him by taking the initiative and actually doing some of the work with no prompting from him, nor an agreement or payment for it. Needless to say, he was impressed.

So, this morning when I checked my email I was surprised to see a fax of my agreement, tweaked around to serve as a basis for this person’s relationship with his new VA. I was confused, thought that he accidentally faxed it to me instead of this other person, but as I looked at the very familiar agreement, my freakin’ fax number was left on there as the number to send the agreement back to. Kind of funny, right?

Well, what I didn’t find too funny was the price that this other VA was working for. It was less than half of my hourly rate, and I charge what I believe to be industry standard. There is no way a person can run a business for that type of money, not in North America. I don’t care that another VA got the project. I’m too busy to worry about that stuff. What does bother me, though, is that people charge such ridiculously low rates to land jobs. I think it does a great disservice to other newbies to the industry trying to make it by charging the rates that they need to charge to make a living.

I believe there’s a big difference between doing this as a job and running a VA practice as a business. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me, and I’m okay with it personally. I have clients that appreciate the fact that when you pay peanuts you get monkeys, so I’m doing just fine. I just hate that there isn’t a governing body or something to set a rock bottom rate for VAs to charge. I don’t know, is that a good idea or a bad idea? If everyone had to charge a minimum price it would at least put everyone on level playing ground. Am I just grumpy?

Thing is…there are certain websites that I can’t access with Firefox because they don’t support any browsers besides Explorer. That really burns me…tee hee…get it? Firefox-burns me…anyway….

I really can’t believe that Top Producer is among the three sites in three days that I have been unable to access with Firefox. How frustrating! I don’t think there’s any good reason for it. If there is, I wish someone would enlighten me.

Is anyone else with me here?

And can anyone share their favorite Firefox features with me? I don’t use it to its full potential. I know it has lots of cool capabilities, but I haven’t really had the time to learn much about it.

I would love to hear what you do with your Firefox.

Maybe these content stealers (How d’ya like that word? Brings me back to grade 3…) don’t think they’ll be caught. Maybe they don’t know about CopyScape. Maybe these people don’t realize that anyone can go to www.CopyScape.com and type in their url to find out if anyone has copied their content.

Well, the other day I typed in MannMadeTime.com at CopyScape and low and behold there was a match. Someone has copied and pasted, almost word for word, an article I wrote some time ago and have posted on my website.I’ve contacted this VA twice now, and have not received a response.  I was hoping I wouldn’t have to get nasty about it, but looks like I’m going to have to make a phone call or something.

My point is – check CopyScape regularly to see if you’ve been plagiarized.

And if you’re a plagiarizer – stop it. If you aren’t a good writer, hire someone to write your content. Don’t steal it from somebody else. You might be surprised at how inexpensive it is to hire someone to revamp or create from scratch, your web content. And once you’ve been labeled a plagiarizer among your peers (if you’re a VA, you should know VAs talk to each other…trust me) you might find out rather quickly that it doesn’t pay to take content that came from someone else’s head.

I’m done now.

Wow, I seem to be ranting a lot this week. Sorry ’bout that.

“Oh Martha, look at the little note I got in that fancy internet box,” says Walter with a smile. “Says here I can please you better.”

“Oh, Walter,” giggles Martha, “Where do we stick our credit card in the internet machine?”

Seriously. Why do these spammers even bother? I don’t get it. Don’t these people have anything better to do with their time?

Besides the erectile dysfunction drugs and other ‘enhancement’ products I get emails for everyday, there are also tons of nice girls that want to chat with me. How lovely.

These emails mostly go straight to my junk folder, but then there are the other emails. The ones from scam artists.

The people that have fathers wrongly imprisoned and need you, their trusted friend, to accept a payment of 3 million dollars in your US bank account, blah blah blah.

There are other con artists about as well, some wanting you to send them money, some disguised as PayPal emails, and so on and so forth.

(If you ever get an email from ‘PayPal’ that doesn’t address you by name, or says your account has been suspended, or something else along those lines – NEVER take it as the truth. PayPal will always call you by name, never ‘PayPal customer’ or anything else. And they would call you about anything of a serious nature. If you have an email that looks suspicious, forward it to spoof@paypal.com and the real PayPal people will tell you if it’s bogus or not.)

Anyway, what inspired me to write this post was an email I received this morning.

It is a very brief message from someone asking some questions about how I accept payment from people located outside of the US, and where my offices are located. My first reaction was – sounds like a scam.

Isn’t that terrible? I’m preprogrammed to put everything under a microscope and analyze the heck out of it before I respond.

This could be a scam, but it might be legit. Who knows? I emailed him back and answered his questions concisely. Mind you, I Googled him first.

Jeeez…is everyone else this skeptical?

I’m going to share a story with you.

Every year, there is a big Christmas Craft Fair at the Civic Center in Charlottetown. I am not one for crowds and I usually stay away from large events with masses of human beings moving each other down aisles – not for me.

However, there is one vendor that brings me to that fair each year. (I won’t mention their name here.) It’s a place that makes personalized ornaments and I absolutely love them. They have become a part of the Christmas tradition in my new family. When my husband and I were engaged, we got an ornament personalized for our ‘1st Christmas’ together. The following year, when we were married, my sister-in-law gave us a personalized ornament from there with our wedding date on it. The next year, when we were expecting our first child we had ornaments made to announce the news to our families. I had an ornament made for me in honor of my pregnancy. The following year, we got our daughter’s ‘1st Christmas’ ornament from that vendor. The next year when we were expecting our second child, we had an ornament made, again, to announce the news to our families as well as a new family ornament with four snowmen – one representing myself, my husband, my daughter, and a ‘TBA’ snowman to represent the new baby.

That Christmas fair has come and gone. I didn’t make it because I was just too busy. It wasn’t until this past week I realized we didn’t get an ornament made for our new baby! This might sound trivial to some people, but it’s a big deal to me. This is a tradition that’s been going on since 2002! And what will Shelby think when there are ornaments to mark every other event in our lives except for her?! Talk about second child syndrome.

This company has no website. They’re in Nova Scotia – a neighboring province – so a trip over there to get one ornament is not an option. I called the company yesterday to see if they would be able to mail an ornament to me.

“No, we don’t do that,” was the answer I got.

“Really? And you don’t have a website or anything?” I said…panic in my voice…”But I have a story! This is part of our Christmas tradition! Do you know how important this is to me?” I thought…wondering if I told the girl this it would change her mind. But by the tone in her voice, I doubted it would matter.

“No. We don’t do anything like that. Sorry.” I wonder what the owner of that business would have said to me. I hope the conversation would have gone differently.

I can understand mail order could cause a lot of problems for a small business like this – especially during the holidays. However, think of how the sales could sky rocket! Couldn’t she at least have asked me what I needed? We could have worked something out. I could have described what I wanted, asked if it could be made up for me so I could have someone pick it up for me.

Instead, a paying customer was told “no we don’t do that” and that was it. I don’t think that’s acceptable. If you are a small business that creates gift items that could potentially be cherished collectible items, you should be more accommodating than that. If not, don’t bother going to fairs every year to get people hooked on you. Seriously.

I have contacted a fellow VA in Nova Scotia, Amanda Dugas, who has agreed to pick up an ornament for me. Thankfully I have a virtual friend willing to do me a favor.

I’m just steamed that I got such a cold, hard ‘no’ from a small business that gives me the warm and fuzzies every year when I decorate my Christmas tree.