Emily Brown
A frustrated tree surgeon has shared footage of his response to a customer who chose not to pay as a warning to anyone considering following in their footsteps:
Jamie Young of A1 Tree Surgeons of Whitworth, Lancashire, carried out the tree-cutting job on a property on the outskirts of Rochdale, Greater Manchester on 11 July after being asked to shape the conifer into a 'Christmas tree style'.
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The 37-year-old completed the job, but claimed he had to cut the tree into a more round shape because 'you can't have conifer at a point when they're pruned'.
He added: "You can't make something look like a Christmas tree when it doesn't want to be because they're all dead inside."
Jamie said he warned the customer of this beforehand, but after finishing the job the company received a text from the customer to say they had 'a complaint'.
It read: "I hate to say but Jamie turned up eventually two weeks later and he hasn't done what I asked him to do, nor did he inform us he was coming (which I asked him to do). More so, he has made a right pig's ear of it. I wanted it cut Christmas tree style as it was. I seem to now have something that resembles a part of someone's hedge. I'm not at all happy... It's not even symmetrical nor level on the top."
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The company responded to explain that it would still need to be paid the £40 for the job as Jamie had done the work, to which the customer responded: "No chance, that is in no way what I asked for. I wanted it the same shape it was aka still Christmas tree shaped but trimmed. That is not anything like it. I'm sorry but I won't be paying."
As a result of their decision not to pay, the company explained that Jamie would be returning with the waste from the job, saying: "So you can't complain if you get a pile of waste back tomorrow, we are well within our rights to do that."
In a video shared online, Jamie and two other workers could be seen carrying large bags of tree cuttings to the customer's garden before tipping them over the fence. In the clip, he warned: "this is what happens to customers who refuse to pay for a job."
Jamie, from Lancashire, later described his actions as a 'last resort' to get his point across, saying: "It's a bit of a sorry situation over £40. You'd expect it to be over £1,400 or £4,000, not £40. I don't expect a penny until people have seen the job and they're happy with it and that's how I've always worked.
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"I think she thought she'd rip me off and if I kicked up a fuss it'd look bad on me - but she thought wrong. It backfired. It's nothing to do with the money, it's the principle."
Jamie explained that if he had let the customer get away without paying then he would have 'one [customer] a week' try to do the same.
"This lets people know it's not on and it'll fire back on you. I don't think she realised how far it'd go," he continued.
After Jamie shared the video online, the customer claimed the money was 'sat waiting' for Jamie as they'd hoped they could 'resolve' the situation, before adding: "sadly not".
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The company responded to say the customer could 'keep [their] money, saying: "Some of us aren't that desperate for £40."
In the wake of the situation, Jamie commented: "You wouldn't walk into a shop, get a month's worth of shopping, then get to the till and say you can't pay for it. If someone does this to a landscaper who put £10,000 into a garden, it could shut someone's business down. A lot of people's families depend on people paying."
The tree surgeon has received support from viewers after sharing the video online, with Facebook users saying it was 'shocking' people would use his services and then not pay.