The LeafFilter saga, or how to use social media to clamber out of the gutter

Sometimes a company doesn’t live up to what it has promised you. That can make you angry. What should you do about it? This post is about what happened when a company called LeafFilter disappointed me, and what I did about it.

My father’s mirror

I want to start by talking about my father. The date is some time in the early 1960s. My father, a very calm and logical man with a Ph.D. in chemistry, has purchased a mirror from the automotive department at Sears. The mirror has an adhesive backing and is designed to stick on the back of the sun visor in your car so that someone — in this case, most likely my mother — can check their appearance upon entering or leaving the car.

The mirror that my father purchased does not work properly — it won’t stick. So my father returns to Sears, along with my brother and me, both little kids at the time. He asks for his money back. The amount is probably about three dollars, which was worth more back then, but is still not a princely sum.

The salesperson to whom he is speaking asks if he has a receipt.

“I don’t keep every receipt for every little thing I purchase,” my father says.

“Sir, I cannot refund your money without a receipt,” the salesperson says.

“I obviously bought it here,” my father says. But the salesperson says that doesn’t matter.

As I recall, next there is a fairly heated exchange. And my father does something very out of character.

“Listen, buddy,” he says with a slightly raised voice. “You are being unreasonable. Your policy makes no sense. I understand that you feel you have to follow it, but let me tell you what is going to happen. If you don’t give me my money back, I’m going to smash the mirror on the floor right here and it will shatter into a million pieces. And you’re going to have to clean it up.”

The sales guy gets a very strange look on his face. He doesn’t think my dad will do it. But he isn’t sure — my dad, looks very determined and a little unhinged. And he doesn’t want to clean up a very big mess.

My dad gets his money back. And that story becomes legendary in my family.

Signing up with LeafFilter

Now it is no longer the 1960s. It is the fall of 2021. I have just purchased a new home in Maine. It is surrounded by tall and beautiful trees. And unlike the home I had in Massachusetts, it has gutters. It’s a long house, so it has a lot of gutters.

Every morning as I look out the window of my bathroom on the second floor, I can look down on some of the gutters. They are full of leaves. My wife has decided that we ought to do something about that, and has arranged for a guy from LeafFilter to come see us. She assures me that based on her research, they are the best company to keep the gutters on your house free of leaves.

On Monday, November 1, a “Factory Account Representative” that I’ll call Jeffrey comes to out house. (I’ve changed all the names in this story.) Jeffrey takes a close look at every gutter in our house. He explains how LeafFilter’s gutters guards are made of surgical-grade stainless steel and will not need maintenance. Then he goes back to his car and comes back with a contract including a quote.

We have agreed that for now, the LeafFilter company will do two things — mount a new gutter on one side of my house where there is none, and then clean out, seal, and where necessary, reinforce the gutters that are already there. They won’t put their great product on until next year, after I replace the roof. This suits me, since I want to try the company out before I shell out a huge sum for gutter guards. (While the company has a quality reputation, its product is very expensive.)

Jeffrey’s contract says that they will mount the new gutters and clean the old ones on January 20, 2021. But since that date is ten months in the past, I know he really means January of 2022. And I don’t want to wait that long. In the next few months, leaves will block the water in my gutters, then it will freeze, and then who knows what bad things could happen.

Jeffrey wants to come into my house to discuss it, but with the current state of the virus, I see no reason to invite him in — he can see everything he needs to see, including me, from the outside.

“Your installation date is too late,” I say. My wife and I have discussed it, and we want this done before winter arrives.

“That’s the soonest that is available,” he says.

“It’s not soon enough for me,” I say.

“There’s nothing earlier on the schedule,” he says.

“That sounds like a you problem, not a me problem,” I say.

“Let me see what I can do,” he says. And he returns to his truck.

A few minutes later, he knocks on my door and hands me the contract again. He has crossed out January 20, 2021, and written in November 18, 2021 — less than three weeks from the day we are talking.

“That, I can do,” I say. And I sign the contract.

To be clear, the contract requests no down payment, and I have made no down payment. All the money is due on delivery of the service. Which is fine with me.

Three strikes

Now it is November 18. The LeafFilter people are supposed to arrive between 8 am and noon. But by 1 pm, no one has arrived.

On the contract, there is an 800 number for customer service. Jeffrey had circled it and said to call them if I need help. So I call the number.

After waiting a few minutes on hold, I reach a customer service person who looks up my contract in her system. “The work on your house is scheduled for January 20,” the customer service person tells me.

“No, it is not,” I tell her. “I have a copy of the contract in my hand that says the service is due today.”

“That’s not in our system,” she says.

I figure Jeffrey can fix this. So I call Jeffrey.

There is no answer and his voicemail is full.

I call back customer service and go through the same runaround. But this time, I don’t give up. “I have a contract that says it’s today,” I say. “Can you resolve this?”

“I’ll have someone at the company’s Maine office call you back,” she says. “When that happens, they usually get us an answer within a day or so.”

The next day, I call customer service again. Nothing has changed. They’ll get somebody to call me back, they say. No one does.

I send an email to the email address on Jeffrey’s card. No response.

I send a text with a photo of the contract to Jeffrey. “Here is the contract for the work you promised. No show. And your company has no record of it. How will you fix this, Jeffrey?”

He responds to the text. “The company does have a record, you spoke with someone ill informed. I spoke with [name redacted] who changed the date for me, and he said he would be in touch with you.”

No one calls me. Nothing happens.

I’d give up and cancel, but I really would like someone to clean my gutters before winter, and I probably can’t get anyone else this late in the season. I’d do it myself, but my back and my knees are not really in good enough shape to climb ladders and clean out gutters.

Five days later, I call customer service again. This time, I tell them that I’ll write about their broken promises on every consumer site I can find.

I have a brainstorm. I call the local office number on Jeffrey’s card. And somehow, I get through to a very busy woman, let’s call her Sarah, who is in charge of scheduling.

Sarah also thinks I am scheduled for January 20. But she has a physical copy of the contract and can see that it has a different date on it. After some back and forth — and another threat to post bad reviews — she schedules me for December 3, nine days after our conversation.

Having written a popular book at the dawn of social media, I have accumulated 23,000 Twitter followers. I send a tweet, just for fun.

Call 1 to @LeafFilter: Why didn’t you show up as promised? No call back, no response.
Call 2: Why didn’t you show up? No call back.
Call 3: Why? Dropped call.
Call 4: I will savage you on all rating sites unless I get an answer soon.

Problem solved in 30 minutes.

Now it is December 3. I’m home, waiting for the workmen to arrive. But nobody comes.

I call Jeffrey. Voice mail is full. I text Jeffrey. No response.

I call the local office of LeafFilter again, because I know there’s no point in calling the national customer service number where they will tell me to wait until January. I get Sarah again. She vaguely recalls our previous call, but I’m not on the schedule for today’s date — the date she said they’d show up.

At this point my blood is boiling. She can tell. She says they are down a bunch of crews, but people are coming from other parts of the country to fill the need. And she reschedules me for December 9, six days later, and five weeks after my first meeting with Jeffrey. A crew from some other state that’s now roaming around Maine will do the job. She promises me she will call the day before.

When she doesn’t call the day before, I call her. She confirms the crew is coming the next day, but in the afternoon.

I don’t notice any workmen showing up. But I get a text message with a photo from Sarah. It is a picture of my roof. The workers apparently did show up, got a look at my roof and my gutters with frozen leaves, determined that their equipment couldn’t do the job, and left — without even knocking on my door.

Now I’m screwed. I waited too long to get someone else. I tell Sarah to cancel the contract.

Jeffrey piles on

I send another text to Jeffrey. “Your company just failed to show up and do their job for the third time today. Our relationship is over. But I will file complaints on every consumer site I can find.”

Now, for some reason, Jeffrey calls me. It is a very loud and angry conversation. But eventually I shut up and listen to Jeffrey’s points. They are:

1. Have you ever had to depend on workers? Sometimes they don’t do what they promise.
2. We are down a bunch of crews. We cannot keep up with the demand right now.
3. You never paid us any money.
4. We have to make choices. Some days they have to decide to do a job like yours or a $20,000 job at someone else’s house. So they do the $20,000 job.
5. No one looks at those consumer sites anyway, so don’t waste your time posting there. No one will believe you.
6. You were incredibly rude to me and everyone at my company. You didn’t even let me into your house.

I’m thinking that it’s pretty rude to promise to show up three times and then not only fail to show up, but fail to even call and give me a heads up. So I am feeling rude.

I think of my father with the mirror. I feel like it is time to smash the mirror on the floor.

“You fucked with the wrong guy,” I tell Jeffrey. Now he’s incredibly upset, and wants to tell me how people like me get what they deserve.

I hang up on Jeffrey while he is in the middle of a sentence.

And I post a reply to my previous tweet.

I spoke too soon. @LeafFilter has now missed two more appointments. "You don't understand . . . we have labor problems" they say.

Well, now you have a customer problem, too.

— Josh Bernoff (@jbernoff) December 9, 2021

What happened next?

Before I tell you what happened next, I have a question for you. And I want an honest answer.

What would you do if you were me?

Do you think I was behaving like a “Karen”: someone who asks to speak to the manager after a minor or imagined slight? After all, I didn’t pay a dime. All I lost was time and heartache.

Do you think I was rude not to let Jeffrey into my house? To insist on an earlier date? To get upset with the failure to show up or contact me? To tell Jeffrey that he fucked with the wrong guy? Should I be ashamed of being rude? Was it justified?

I did a lot of waiting in this story. Now you will have to wait to hear what happened next. I assumed this was the end of a long story, but it wasn’t. And I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

Story continues here.