Painter Spends $878 on "Free" Color Samples for Client

PALO ALTO, CA — At Abrush and Beyond Paint­ing, own­er Ben Rogers had a sim­ple cus­tomer-rela­tions mot­to: You Want It, You Got It! ​“It’s our way of being a good neigh­bor,” Mr. Rogers always explained. The cus­tomer ser­vice of this neigh­bor­ly painter was put to the test recent­ly, when a client asked for col­or sam­ples to be paint­ed on their walls. So, how did they do? The cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­al says it all! ​“Mr. Rogers was excep­tion­al! He came and applied 16 dif­fer­ent sam­ples of greige to my liv­ing room walls, so I could pick the best one. Then we decid­ed we pre­ferred tan, so he paint­ed us 13 vari­eties of that. In the end, we real­ly thought white was best. We had trou­ble decid­ing on the right white, so Mr. Rogers put 47 options on the wall for us. And it was all free!” After using three coats of primer to cov­er the sam­ples, and tab­u­lat­ing the over­head on the job, Mr. Rogers real­ized he had spent $878.49 on these ​“free” col­or sam­ples. At a recent crew leader meet­ing, Mr. Rogers was heard telling his painters the new com­pa­ny mot­to: ​“You want it, you’ll pay for it!”