so yesterday afternoon, in wind and single digit temperatures i dug some edgings out and cut up a couple of five gallon buckets of kindling, then i sorted through the firewood pile and picked out some good small pieces and some pine with lots of splinters on it.
this morning with 16 below zero, i left the house at 7:15 and went to load up firewood. i had 3 other deliveries to make, but to deliver the kindling to her was about another 10 miles of crappy roads and crappier drivers. but while i am loading up firewood, i get a message on my phone saying that she just wants her money back and for me to take the wood away. no hard feelings she says, she wont tell anyone about me or the wood. this is the second or third time she has gone out of her way to tell me that she wont trash talk me. my experience is that anyone who professes not to do something either already has, or soon will, or is threatening that if i dont do what she wants, she will.
since i had already left, and my deliveries today didnt require a wheel barrow, i didnt have one with me. when i delivered the wood to her i didnt have one, but that is because she said i could back right up to the garage. what she failed to mention was that the wood didnt go in the garage, it went behind it. behind it was down the side, and around the corner where she had a metal rack for stacking. i should have known then that there would be a problem. she told me then that her landscaper had told her to stack the wood several feet from the house because of bugs getting into the stucco from the wood. well her landscaper is the brown boy that "cleaned" the wood, the guy that is trash talking my product.
after my 3 deliveries today, i called and left her a message telling her that i couldnt pick it up today, as i was already losing money on this and couldnt make a special trip to pick up the wood, but that i would do it tomorrow. i also told her that i would buy back whatever wood she had left, and that if there were any evidence that showed that the wood was dirty, or had bugs, or was wet, i would gladly refund 100% of her money. and that she needed to have a path shoveled to the wood pile so i could get a wheel barrow around the back of the house.
when i get there tomorrow, i will ask her to show me the bugs, show me the dirty wood (not all was cleaned), and i will SHOW her the numbers on the moisture meter. if it is under 20% moisture, i will not refund all her money, i will keep back $20 for the labor to stack and remove, and i will pay her for what wood she has left, if its half, then half. if it is over 20%, i will give her 100% of her money back, apologize, and leave.
20% moisture content is plenty dry for firewood. i am not sure, but i bet up to 30% would even be ok. over the years i actually had one customer call me to complain that the wood they bought from me was TOO DRY!
umpkin2:
