My approach is to gently lead them in the right direction, always use the line what are your expectations from the tree, what is it you want from this tree. If they come back with no leaves on the roof/ in the pool/ on the driveway
well then its probably going to be a short visit.
We get fewer and fewer clients like that because I suppose the word on Steve's business is that we're Arborists and we won't cut a tree in half....We walk away from a lot of jobs, and its always dissapointing to go past a place where you spent 30-45 mins explaining the options for a tree only to see it totally lopped 3/4months later.
But thats the drawback in the domestic market, in general, the home owner believes there are no standards that they have to adhere to (in fact there are lots of them) they want the cheapest price for the most work, and so long as nothing goes wrong they believe their experience backs up their view. For the people who call us out only to insist that their tree must be lopped we'll tell them they'd be better putting their cash in a pile and setting fire to it
they'd get more productive result than from the lopping.
SF