My wife told me I am not allowed to give ball-park estimates anymore. No matter that everyone always says "I won't hold you to it", if the job come out more than the "off the top of my head" estimate, they almost always say "well Steve said it would only be this much."
I have always made it a practice to tell my customers that I encourage them to be here while we are working on their boat. That way I don't have to explain later why it took me 15 minutes to unscrew a turnbuckle that hadn't been lubed or exercised since the Clinton administration. Or why I had to remove the entire spreader and take it into the shop in order to remove the pin holding the discontinuous
rigging to the tip because no one bothered to apply a little never-seize to it when the boat was commissioned.
I have heard lots of horror stories about boatyards but I can't think of too many that if the customer had been diligent about overseeing the job and clarifying things before hand and the yard had been diligent about keeping the customer informed and aware of complications that arise wouldn't have turned out a lot better.
As Larry said, we are not evil, we are not trying to take advantage of our customers. That would be stupid.
It takes a whole lot of "Atta boys" to make up for one "Aw ****". Anyone serious about being in business knows that.
A good reputation is the best advertising that a business can have and if a company forgets that they should hang it up.