Honesty – The best policy

We received a rather interesting call the other day, purportedly from a prospective client. This client was asking about a specific image they had seen on our website; they wanted to know how much it would cost them if we were to reproduce the same decor for their function.
Well, we delivered the usual spiel, trying ascertain what the client was really after, as well as find out the location of their proposed function – the location obviously impacts on balloon delivery and logistical set up costs, (you know, we are really creative people and love to prepare bespoke decor for each client). When we found ourselves being steered in the conversation towards divulging every last detail of how we put the decor together, we began to feel rather suspicious.
Finally, we told the client, ” we work based on trust, expecting our clients to trust us to deliver what we have agreed with them to deliver (we love to add our own extras too – just to delight our clients even more) while we trust them to honour our terms and conditions ; and as it seemed this particular client was more interested in querying us, we rang off – politely of course!

The penny drops!

Anyway, imagine our surprise when half an hour later, we received another call from the same “client” who decided to finally be straight with us. They really wanted that decor, but they are located very far away from us (a few hundred miles) and didn’t think it would be cost effective for them to hire us to do it for them; so they were on a fact finding mission, they wanted detailed instructions on how to implement the decor.

Well, to cut a rather long story short, they did realise their objective, but not before they were on the receiving end of a rather stern reprimand from us and had apologised for their deceit!
‘Tope Abulude is a well known balloon decorating instructor who enjoys teaching others, so had this person been straight from the start, they may have got what they sought much earlier and without the “earful” they received.
The question is, what would you have done and do you think our caller was male or female?
Please leave your comments below.
Thank you.