I wanted to turn my rough patio into a sunroom and naively thought I could make that happen this year. I went to the home show and had a builder give an estimate — only they don’t do concrete work. So, I had a concrete guy come and measure for an estimate, but never received one or heard from him again. Even if he had followed through, I would have still needed another vendor to tear down the existing half-walls and yet another to landscape the new space. Assuming that I could even find someone interested in doing the work.
My friend is renovating an old home, and her contractor did a portion of the work and never even gave a quote on doing the rest. My sister is getting a $9K new sprinkler system in their condo building, and again, the vendor was a no-show/no-call at their installation appointment, negating all the effort to coordinate three units and evacuate five pets for the day. It is maddening.
General manners dictate that ghosting a friend or potential second date is impolite. That same principle applies to ignoring clients (or potential ones). If you can’t keep your schedule or don’t have capacity to do the work, a quick “no” is the proper response. No matter the circumstances, silence is not golden.
