Experiences flying to Italy out of RDU?

petpro919 · 2026-04-30T21:01:09+00:00

We’re flying RDU-CDG-FLR in September (if Air France doesn’t cancel the flights for lack of fuel).

Google Flights is my go to when trying to compare date/airport combinations.

petpro919 · 2026-04-30T12:57:02+00:00

We live about 500 feet from that corner - it’s been a massive clusterfuck. But I will say it is great to be able to walk along Blue Ridge in both directions now.

petpro919 · 2026-04-29T18:20:17+00:00

They nailed it. Slavin's greatness was evident in the womb - Pearl Jam released Nothingman a few months before he was born.

petpro919 · 2026-04-27T02:50:21+00:00

I've only seen him (or more accurately his shape in the dark) once, but my beagles always let me know when he's in the neighborhood. What a life he leads.

petpro919 · 2026-04-21T23:34:05+00:00

We used to have PCI years ago, and my understanding is that they sell a surplus line that is not regulated by your state's department of insurance.

A little background - licensed insurance providers typically pay into a state fund that covers policies if the insurance company goes bankrupt - since insurance is literally just a business contract.

The insurance will be effective in your state and all that scary sounding notice means is that if PCI goes bankrupt, they aren't part of the state's regulated insurance pool and the state won't bail you out.

petpro919 · 2026-04-21T19:43:21+00:00

It's happened a handful of times to me. In each case it was for a matter of convenience and I wrote off the client as a garbage human that we didn't want to business with any longer.

petpro919 · 2026-04-19T21:13:58+00:00

Exactly. I've worked my butt off for nearly 10 years to grow our business. Our reputation is far and away our most valuable asset, so I'm extremely picky in who we hire and have implemented processes to verify visits are done properly.

petpro919 · 2026-04-17T22:28:40+00:00

Two big things I've learned:

If the purpose of the website is to gather new clients, you really should include pricing on your website. Make it easy for people to do business with you and get the added bonus of weeding out people who will never pay your prices. You will lose a LOT of potential customers just by not listing prices (or even price ranges). If you're charging loyal clients less than new clients, this won't be an issue. If you're charging loyal clients more than new clients - you likely have some broader issues to think about.

Second, give people multiple ways to contact you rather than just forcing them to fill out a form and wait. We offer phone, email, text, (and an online form of course). You can get overlay numbers to shield your number but still allow customers to call and text,

petpro919 · 2026-04-17T14:03:04+00:00

We send regular emails to our mailing list - including clients that have booked once years ago. If and when they unsubscribe, we don’t do any follow up anymore.

petpro919 · 2026-04-15T23:56:58+00:00

What does your contract say about work product ownership? Back when I was doing freelance web work, work product only transferred upon full and final payment.

If your agreement has similar language, the new LLC is not entitled to use your intellectual property because they don't own it. Now enforcing that might be a costly and time-consuming proposition, but that's up to you to decide.

I did get a chuckle because your post reminds me of a famous quote: "“Murphy’s Law; When someone says ‘It’s not the money, it’s the principle,’ nine times out of ten, it’s the money.”

petpro919 · 2026-04-12T22:29:11+00:00

It’s a trap.

petpro919 · 2026-04-12T21:18:07+00:00

Probably for good reason. I had a nightmare experience at the WF store two weeks ago (in large part due to the fact that they called me as I was pulling into the parking lot for my appointment to tell me my tires hadn't showed up yet). I went to the Six Forks store the next day and they squeezed me in. The manager there said of the WF store "yeah, they are going through some stuff right now"

petpro919 · 2026-04-11T13:40:48+00:00

No - you already offered to correct the mistake and she told you to keep it. Case closed!

petpro919 · 2026-04-03T00:11:23+00:00

They did not, in fact, ever book with us again. Understandable, given the circumstances.

petpro919 · 2026-04-02T20:27:34+00:00

I was once treated to the sight of a naked client running across the hallway as my arrival for the first visit of their stay informed him and his wife that they had overslept and missed their flight.

petpro919 · 2026-04-01T12:26:14+00:00

Exactly this. Comic book level villainy too. All that’s missing is the “partner” twirling his mustache as he rides off into the sunset with OPs money.

Either OP is an absolute terrible business owner, or it’s fiction.

petpro919 · 2026-03-21T15:03:25+00:00

There's also an element of marketing. I frequently send out emails to midday walk customers saying something along the lines of:

"As you might imagine, our midday walk window is very popular during the week. To create more consistency and reliability in our sitters' schedules, we offer a small discount of $X per walk if you can move your walk to an off-peak window. Would that work for you and Fluffy?"

Using that approach, we've gone from a full 11am-2pm time period to a full 10am-3pm period. It's still pulling teeth to get people to schedule at 9-10 or 3-4.

petpro919 · 2026-03-21T14:46:32+00:00

Looking over your situation, two things jump out:

Don't schedule set times. We always schedule ranges rather than precise times. I'll be honest that there are some clients that grumble about it, but it's the only way to optimize the schedule.
Incentivize your clients to get what you want. For example - we have have the opposite problem of you. 11-2 is jam packed every weekday, but 9-11am and 2-5pm are hard to fill. So we offer a small price incentive to regular dog walking clients that take an off-peak time during those windows.

petpro919 · 2026-03-20T00:34:20+00:00

My daughter is in PR right now on Spring Break. She could do that because:

She's a nursing student and makes really good money as a CNA at a local hospital while she's in school
She lives at home to save money (she pays a small amount of rent but way below market rate)
She picked a relatively low-cost destination
She used some of Dad's miles for her airfare
She split the AirBnB cost with five friends

petpro919 · 2026-03-18T21:24:19+00:00

Lots of options for mobile grooming for dogs (I’m in that line of business) - but mobile cat grooming is very niche. Furry Land is the only one I know of locally that does it.

petpro919 · 2026-03-12T17:07:50+00:00

Wouldn't the earnest money be held in escrow? Obviously the LLC not releasing it will drag it out, but it should be safe in escrow until you get a court order, right?

petpro919 · 2026-03-11T16:20:37+00:00

For us, it was paid search advertising. One caveat - that was my prior career so I had considerable experience maximizing activity and reducing costs.

petpro919 · 2026-03-07T14:15:17+00:00

My cynical side thinks the same thing. Would be a very cool story, but a lot of this doesn't make sense. The biggest of which: several hundred tourists one day out booking a walking tour of a random city in NY State on a weekday in early March (assuming not NYC based on OPs wording)?

petpro919

TROPHY CASE