When things go wrong running a marquee hire business

First off don’t worry. It’s incredibly rare to have any problem and even then they’re generally minor things.

If you’re starting up a marquee hire business you’re probably worrying about:

The marquees blowing away – make sure they’re always well anchored down. We never had this happen to us and I don’t know any hire business this has happened to.

Not being paid for the job. If you take a small deposit but then have the balance payable when the marquees up but before it’s used then you never have any bad debts (don’t allow any exceptions). It’s easy getting payment when you can still take the marquee down, if you leave it until after the event you have no leverage.

Realistically the only problem we really encountered (and to be honest it did happen a couple of times a year) is the customer complaining that the marquee roofs are dirty. If you put a marquee up under a tree when it rains all the dirt drips down off the leaves on to your marquee, this is the main cause of dirt building up. If it’s in your busiest time of year and it’s going straight back up you just don’t get time to clean it.

The solution? We’d give the customer a roof lining for free.This covered the dirty roof and the customer’s also happy because they’re getting a higher spec marquee than they’re paying for.

I was always reluctant to knock money off to solve any problem, you end up haggling and compromising so neither of you are happy and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Are people going to recommend you afterwards?

At the end of the day a happy customer has always got to be your goal, you need to do whatever you need (within reason) to make sure every customer is happy. You’d be amazed, some of our best recommendations came from people who’d originally complained but we’d sorted it out for them.

I’m a firm believer that you see the true side of a business (and a person) when things go wrong, make sure you react well and your reputation will only benefit from it.

Thanks for reading

Spencer.