Important Information Regarding 2017 Sprinkler Blowouts

This is a wordy post, and I apologize for the length, but it's important.

In about 10 days we will be starting our sprinkler blowouts for the 2017 season.  The planned start date is October 10, and if that changes we will let you know here.

Irrigation Schedules

We are still not sure of shut-down dates for a few of the irrigation districts.  Pioneer Irrigation will be ending the season on October 6, with the last day of water delivery on the 5th.  The best info I can get so far from Settler's Irrigation is between October 6-13th, so nothing difinitive there.  If I remember correctly, they shut down on October 9 in 2015 and 2016, so we may see a repeat again this year.  The New York Irrigation district has informed me they are shutting down on October 16.  The Nampa and Meridian irrigation district has not returned my call, so no information there.

We Have Made Some Changes

Terms of Service

It seems that every year we have to make changes to our Terms Of Service for sprinkler blowouts to better protect our business and to make things easier to understand.  If you would like to go over the terms of service you agreed to when you signed up, it is located here: Terms of Service.

Payment Policy

Not really a change here, but important to note.  In our terms of service we state that payments are due within 15 days from date of service, and that liens are placed on homes that aren't paid within that time frame.  Most of our customers either leave checks or cash for us if they are not at home, pay at the time of service, or make their payment online quickly.  However, we usually get about 100 or so that don't follow our terms.  They do pay, but take 30-45 days or more to do so.  We have been very lenient in the past and held off on liens to avoid the hassle, but unfortunately we can no longer allow extra time.  We will have another machine running, and to do so we now have to meet payroll.  Not easy to do if the funds aren't available.  This will be even more important in the future as we add more machines and technicians to run them as our business grows. ANY PAYMENTS NOT MADE WITHIN 15 DAYS FROM THE DATE OF SERVICE WILL HAVE A LIEN PLACED ON THE SERVICED ADDRESS.  Only one courtesy reminder this year.

When we have sent out payment reminders in the past and explained our policy that they agreed to, a few have actually given us a bad review on Yelp, the Better Business Bureau, or Facebook with "He threated to place a lien on my property."  Again, these are the terms that were agreed upon when the request was made.

Growth

Every year, since the sprinkler blowout portion of our business grows 10-25 percent, we try to improve our route management, how we keep our customers informed, easier navigation of our website, and updates to our sign-up form.  When we first started in this business the population in Meridian alone was less than 10,000 people; nothing near the 95,000+ we have now.  We were able to call our customers 20 years ago and make appointments.  If we called even 1,000 of our customers now with a 5 minute conversation it would require 83 hours on the phone.  An impossibility at any time, but especially during the hectic sprinkler blowout season.

Only a handfull of people had cell phones when we started in the Treasure Valley 20 years ago.  I didn't even have one at first; I carried a digital pager, and had to stop at a pay phone to make a call.  Some of our younger customers have probably never seen one of those……….  Of course texting didn't catch on for awhile, but now almost everyone uses it.  (Even my mother-in-law, who keeps up pretty well with technology didn't really start texting until a year or so ago. (Thanks, mom!))

Improvements We Have Made And Techniques We Are Going To Try This Year

We have posted daily updates of where we are going to be each day on this blog for several years.  We found it to be the best medium at the time to reach our customers in very short time.  We added texting updates a few years ago, which worked quite well, and we received a LOT of praise for doing so, and it is here to stay.  We will also continue to post our daily updates to this blog so that our customers who do not have texting capability can still be informed.  If we have more information than we feel we can text at one time, we will text some info and then a link to our updated information.  If you do not have texting, then it is imperative that you check this blog daily.

A few years ago we started posting a map image of where we were going to be with our stops marked (numbers in place of addresses) so our customers could get an idea of where they were on our route for that particular day.  This also went over really well, so last year we improved on it even more by sending a link of our route to our customers by text.

This year we are looking into our customers being able to track where we are in real time on our route.  Since some blowouts take longer than others, and there are potential problems with systems, inability to find valve boxes, etc., it will take longer to get to some of our customers on our route.  Real time tracking will take some of the guesswork out for those customers who would like a more accurate window of when we might arrive.

We will still keep our customers informed by email, but only until blowouts start.  At that point we will switch to this blog and our texting system.  If there is a lot of information, the emails will most likely contain a link to our current update, which again, will be posted on this blog.

For the last several years we have posted our sprinkler blowout stats and tried to update the post daily so that our customers could see how many sprinkler blowouts we have in their zip code, how many have been completed, and how many we have left.  Last year we added a new column to show what percentage of each area has been completed.  With all the behind the scenes work we have to do once we get back to our office, like invoicing, crediting payments, figuring out our route for the next day, preparing texts for delivery, updating our blog, etc., we didn't always have time to update our stats.  We have integrated our stats with our database, so once we update our daily report it will automatically update the stats table saving us valuable time.

We have made other improvements behind the scenes to help manage our office workload, which will in turn give us more time to devote to the job at hand – blowing our sprinkler systems.

Important Links To Have On Hand This Year

Our 2017 Sprinkler Blowout Stats: Stats

If you wish to cancel your sprinkler blowout click here: Cancel

Help protect your system from freezing while waiting for a sprinkler blowout: Protect

Important Information about sprinkler blowouts in the Treasure Valley: Important

 

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Comments

    • Brad Maesner
    • October 14, 2017
    Reply

    Where am I at on your list?

     

    thanks

    1. Reply

      Brad, I am not sure what you asking. You are one of currently 21 on our Kuna list.

    • Brad Maesner
    • October 17, 2017
    Reply

    Okay Steven.  You can take me off the list.  I found someone who can do it sooner.  

     

     

     

     

    1. Reply

      Brad, you will need to send an official cancellation to be removed as stated in the terms of service.  It will automatically remove you from the database.  Here is the link: http://treasurevalleyrepairs.com/cancellation.html

    • Roni Ketchum
    • October 23, 2017
    Reply

    Hi Steve!  I can't find on your blog when you are doing Meridian 83642

    i haven't gotten a text so hopefully I haven't missed it. 

    Thanks!

    Roni

    1. Reply

      Roni, you haven’t missed a text.  I have not made it to the Meridian 83642 yet

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