Grand Rapids, MI | gene_champ - 9/11/2009 07:17
thanks for the replies that were helpful. i do own a good sprayer. i just chose to hire it done. they have a 120ft boom, so less turning on beans. that is not relavant at this point anyway.
i have a long term good relationship with coop. don't want to be thought of as an a-hole over this. heck, they even weigh back leftover seed beans for me. if it bumps my yield 3-4 bu, i don't want them to think i am trying to get something for nothing. since whole field was sprayed, there is no way to know it there was a yeild bump or not.
has anyone used headline on beans? was there a marked yield bump? how was similar situations like this handled, with all parties satisfied? what is the hardline position for them and me? what was the results of that position? i guess i was looking for something i could use to help me make a decision on how to deal with them over this.
Ok, it seems there are two things to address here. The first is the instant issue of should you pay anything for a product that you did not wish to have applied. Implied in your question seemed to be that you take the following position: You wish to pay for the application you intended plus any net gain you recieved from the unintended application. I think this is a very, and probably the most reasonable way to look at this. The issue is that you have no way of knowing the net gain from the unintended application since this would have been achieved by applying as you intended. I think this on its own is something to consider and discuss with them as well. By applying as they did they have denied you the value of the information about how the application of Headline influenced your soybean yields in that situation. I would assume that information has value to you or you would not have intended to have them apply the way you did.
So now we get to the more legal issues. How did you place the order? Was it written, that it as very clearly their mistake? If it was verbal are you very sure you were 100% clear about what you wanted? If you are certain that you mentioned flagging where the products changed that seems like a good proof positive that it was not applied as ordered.
In this case, my personal advice would be to start with the premise that the extra Headline had no benefit and caused no harm, unless proven otherwise. The difficulty is that it is very hard to show what the benefit might have been. I would ask if there is anyone near to you that had a similar treatment with a check. While it would be interesting to hear what Headline has done for other posters on this board, even if you can get a valid test, what happened perhaps several states away under likely very different conditions is not likely to be informative on the instant issue. If it can't be resonably shown that the Headline provided a benefit to you, you should not pay for it if it can be established that you did not order it for that area.
Now the second part is to address this to be sure that it doesn't happen again. It sounds like this was a verbal order. For the exact reasons we are having this discussion, I prefer written orders. With the smartphone and mobile web applications today, it has gotten easier to consider. Alternatively how soon did they apply it? I would assume that the verbal order taker wrote the order down, perhaps he/she could fax you a confirmation copy so that you would have a chance to correct a miscommunicaiton before it was applied? Or perhaps send an e-mail confirmation that you could get on a smartphone? |
coop spray mistake - only money!
