they’re making a living and if they’re happy with their business Isn’t that a success?
They aren't giving their customers what they want, and the customers are resigned to it because that's what they've come to expect here. For instance, we've had four contractors for our landscaping after our house was finished in the spring of 2020. The first was the contractor who built our house, but we had to let him go after he went way over schedule and way over budget, and then we had to spend several thousand additional dollars to fix some of the stuff he screwed up on the house, or never completed. In fact, we're still spending money over a year later to get that stuff done. Our second contractor came to do an assessment, agreed to do the work, and then never answered a call again. The third never showed up. Our fourth and current contractor has been working on it for 9 months, there are huge mounds of dirt and ponds of water all over the yard, and mowing practically injures your spine as much as you bounce and jerk around on the ruts. He's doing things, albeit very slowly, but that's more than what the previous contractors did, which is the only reason he's still our contractor. People here say that's pretty much normal for the area, but they aren't happy with it by any stretch of the imagination. They'd dearly love a viable alternative just as much as us. On the other side of the coin, we tried for 10 months, with numerous phone calls, to get someone to work on our generator because it wasn't installed the way we wanted. A new generator place opened in Nashville a couple of months ago, I filled out their internet form, and they called the next day. Our generator is now fixed, only a few weeks after contacting those folks. Thank God my hangar construction went better than that. It took a lot longer than it should have, but it went well, especially in regards to the primary contractor.
EDIT: Edited because Pilot-34 and I realized we didn't need to be personal.
