We’ve been seeing some confusion between releasing a job and requesting cancellation from Providers so we wanted to put this article together to help clarify how to choose which. Whether releasing or requesting cancellation, you should always type up a detailed reason for your choice.
Releasing a Job
Releasing a job is a decision centered on you, not the customer or their property. Use this to return a job you’ve claimed to the marketplace so another provider can pick it up for service because you can no longer reasonably expect to provide the service within the allotted time. If you know you’ll have to release a job, do so promptly to protect the customer’s experience and mitigate/prevent you from being charged fees. Waiting to release a job hurts customer experience and is a form of squatting which ultimately hurts your provider ranking.
Reasons for releases include:
- Family emergencies
- Equipment issues
- Changing routes
- Going on vacation
- No longer in the area (after a card charge failure)
- Accepted the job by mistake
- Equipment unsuitable for the job (eg: grass customer’s gate is too small for your push mower or snow customer only wants snow blowing not plowing)
- No longer able to service the property
Requesting Cancellation
Requesting a cancellation is centered on the customer or their property. Use this to flag a request that is not able to be completed as ordered as soon as you determine that to be the case. That way, a LawnGuru rep can be notified and work to fix the issue with the customer so the order can be brought back to life - often back to your board - once it’s been fixed.
Reasons to request cancellation include:
- Lawn is flooding with water (regular rain delays can just be communicated with the customer directly)
- Excessive pet waste
- The gate is locked and you’re unable to get ahold of the customer to allow access
- Aggressive dogs on the property
- Excessive amounts of foreign objects such as glass bottles or debris littering the service area
- Running sprinkler systems
- Vehicles blocking access to the entire service area
- The customer messages you to cancel the service
- Service area already clear (snow only)