I hate to seem like I'm piling on here, but I would have to agree with most everybody else here. My wife and I own a computer business with a retail store front. When somebody comes in and buys computer parts it's up to them to know what to do with them. If the customer damages the part because they used it wrong then that is on them. If they don't have the knowledge to use the part properly we are more than happy to do it for them, for a fee of course. That's how a business stays in business. You can't expect them to do everything for free and stay in business. I've got a something I want you to think about before you start thinking about putting them out of business. Let's assume you didn't buy your plane at the LHS, but instead you ordered it online from Tower Hobbies. Ok, now take that motor you bought from Tower and go knock on the corporate headquarters door and have them tune the motor for you. See what I mean. You have to look at the big picture here. Just because the hobby shop is "Local" doesn't mean that he doesn't need to earn a living.

$20/gallon for 15%. Yes, that is a tad bit high but not unreasonable. Before you flame him for that consider this. After 9/11 there were a lot of rules and regulations in this country that were reworked or completely changed. One of those rules had to do with the transportation of hazardous materials that could be used in a damaging manner. Our fuel falls into that category. The new rules state that anybody that handles that material during it's transportation must have a background check. As a result UPS and FedEx imposed a $20/case handling charge on fuel. So if your LHS gets it's fuel shipping by those shippers it's going to be a little more expensive. My LHS gets his fuel delivered by a freight company and doesn't have to pay that fee. I get my 15% for $15/gallon. If you take the $20 fee/case and divide it by 4 gallons that comes out to $5/gallon additional fee. $15/ gallon fuel cost + $5/gallon transpiration fee = $20/gallon.

I try to treat each and every customer of mine like they are the best I have, but in business occasionally there are going to be people that you can't make happy no matter what you do to serve them. It's funny, but the ones that can't be made happy no matter what you do are also the ones that throw threats around when they get upset. I've heard plenty of them--"I'm never coming in here again"--"You won't last another year"--"I'm going to put you out of business"--"I'm best friends with your best client and I'm going to tell him to never use you again"--"I'm going to sue you unless I get better service". While no businessman wants to have unhappy customers we do tend to get a thick skin when somebody starts throwing around threats like that. Oh yeah, I've been in business for 10 years now. When a customer starts getting loud and making threats I tend to stop listening and to show them the door.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I want to give you some background before I give you one huge golden nugget of advice!!! What is that?? Kindness. It's plain and simple. I'll give you a little example from my world. If a customer buys a motherboard from me, takes it home, comes back and starts yelling at me because it won't work, and demands that make it work because I sold it to him, and starts making threats about what is going to happen if I don't. I'm going to tell him that since the part was a customer install it's not my responsibility to set it up for them, but I would be more than happy to do it for $75/hour labor fee. But if he comes back and says that he has a few questions. If he is nice about it and doesn't make threats I'm more than happy to spend some time with him to figure out the problem. First I'll talk to him about it, but then if that doesn't work I'll usually tell him to bring the system in and let us take a look at it and see why it's not working. "How much is that going to cost?" "Oh heck, it's not going to cost you anything. It's just one of those things we do for our customers". There is an old country saying that comes into play here, it's corny but true. "You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar".

I know this is a long post, and I seem to be on a soap box here, but this post struck a cord in my because I do own a retail store and I see things like this happen all the time. I just wanted to give the other side of the story here.

Take a little bit of time to think about it. You might be surprised what will happen if you take a day or so to calm down and then talk to them again. I know for a fact that he would rather keep you as a client, but he's not going to kiss your feet to do that.

Getting off my soap box now.