When to call, write, or book

Call, write, or book. Those are the three doors. They lead to the same studio — Vancouver since 2015, Pacific time, invoices in CAD, English and French — but they are not interchangeable. Heat uses the phone. A brief we can price uses email. A conversation you want to have out loud uses Square. Using the wrong door wastes the hour that someone else’s checkout needed. It also wastes your Tuesday.

A Burnaby salon whose Square booking died on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend is heat. A Montreal retailer who wants a CAD storefront with French receipts and the right HST for Ontario is a brief. A founder who has three product ideas and has not picked the conversion yet should book an hour and bring the facts, or write until the facts exist. We will not quote a store over the phone from a street address and a vibe. We will not make you book a slot to send a PDF.

All three doors end in the same file once you are a client: a project in the dashboard, a workflow step, notes, purchases, appointments. Until then, the file is the email thread or the Square confirmation. Pick the door that matches the job. If you are unsure, write. Writing is the default. Calling is the exception. Booking is for speech. That order has kept the emergency line free since we published the number.

Call +1 (672) 200-7924 if checkout is down, a launch is today, or a student cannot get into the dashboard. That line is for heat. Pacific time, weekdays. We answer as a studio, not as a call centre. Have the project name, the URL, the processor, and what changed in the last hour. “The site feels slow” is not heat. “The Square cart returns a blank on a paid CAD order and the market opens at four” is heat.

Heat means money or access is blocked now. A live checkout that cannot take a card. Apple Pay that disappeared after a processor change. Interac e-Transfer instructions that point at a closed inbox on launch day. A wallet login that returns an empty nonce because the database is unreachable and a student cannot log hours before a deadline. A merchant who cannot open the project that holds the receipt. Those are weekday phone problems. We will not ask you to book Thursday.

The phone is not for a new brief. The phone is not for “we were thinking of adding French.” The phone is not for negotiating stock photography — we refuse stock people photos in any channel. The phone is not for a care sales chat. Monthly care is $450 CAD. Yearly care is $4,500 CAD. You can buy it at checkout or later. You do not need to occupy the emergency line to hear those numbers. If you call with a brief, we will ask you to write admin@sycgeeks.ca and hang up politely. That is how the next salon reaches us.

If you reach voicemail on a weekday, leave the URL, the processor, and a callback number that a human will answer. Do not leave a five-minute voicemail of adjectives. We will call back on Pacific time. If it is Saturday and the cart is down, write the dashboard notes and the email; we will pick it up on the next weekday unless you already have care and we are watching the job. A store without care is a weekend problem waiting for Monday. That is a fact we put on the care page, not a threat.

Write admin@sycgeeks.ca with the brief, the deadline, and the systems you already use. That is the fastest path to a CAD quote. Audience, offer, the action you want this month. Screenshots of the current site. Languages that must be correct on day one. GST in British Columbia versus HST if you sell into Ontario. You do not need an account. You do not need a Square slot. A one-page note is enough. A forty-page RFP is not faster.

Writing is also the right door after a call or a booking, when the next step is a number. We quote in CAD before anyone writes production code. The catalog and the invoice are CAD. If scope changes, we write a new number on the same project. Care members pay about 25 percent less on published add-ons. None of that math belongs in a voicemail. It belongs in a message you can forward to the person who approves.

If you are already a merchant, you can also write in the project notes. Use the notes for decisions. “Need HST line on the Ontario receipt before Friday” is a note. “Hey team!!” is not. Do not bury a new brief inside an old project. A second language you did not buy, a new collection, a checkout change — that is a published add-on, then we reopen the workflow. Email and notes are for facts that must survive a staff change. Chat evaporates. We refuse to run the job in a forgotten thread.

PIPEDA still applies to the inbox. Send what we need to price and build. Do not send a dump of customer exports “in case.” We collect purpose, not a pile. If the brief includes health, alcohol, or a professional college, attach the rule. We would rather design for it than retrofit in week nine. WCAG questions — can a keyboard user finish the form — belong in the same email if they change the quote. They are launch work, not a later package.

Book a Square appointment if you would rather speak. No account required. Pacific time from Vancouver. Bring the same facts you would put in an email. We will not spend the hour guessing the product. A discovery conversation is for the conversion, the deadline, and the systems you already pay for. It is not a free homepage. It is not a live design show. If you only have a brief, writing is faster. If you have three founders and no action for this month, the hour is to pick one action, not to list twenty.

Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax clients book the same calendar. The overlap is the constraint. Read the confirmation as Pacific. If daylight saving weekend sits between the click and the call, read it again. After you have an account — email or wallet — the booking appears under Appointments. Students still finish orientation before hours save; a booked mentoring slot does not skip that. Merchants should attach the hour to a project in the notes so the next person knows why Thursday exists.

Book a review when the workflow says review, not when you are anxious on a Sunday. Book a working session when we asked for decisions on copy, tax, or the processor. Do not book to start production without a written CAD number. Do not book six people who have not read the brief. Do not book because the phone felt too sharp and the email felt too permanent. If the job is a page we can price, the permanent record is the point.

Heat is a live path that takes money or lets a person in, and that path is broken today. Examples we will pick up on the weekday line: paid CAD orders failing at Square or Stripe; Apple Pay gone after a certificate change; a French checkout that submits and shows an English error; a launched booking page that still points at last year’s hours on a holiday weekend; a student locked out of the hour log the day hours are due; a merchant dashboard that will not load the project that holds the invoice.

Not heat: a new colour on the homepage. A blog nobody asked for. A request for stock photography. A wish to “explore Web3” as the only rail for a salon. A debate about whether GST in BC should look like HST in Ontario — that is a brief or a booked tax decision, unless the live receipt is already charging the wrong rate to a customer today. Wrong tax on a live order is heat. A theoretical tax conversation is email.

Not heat: adding care. Changing from monthly to yearly. Asking whether an add-on is 25 percent off. Those numbers are public. Not heat: choosing English, French, or both for a site that is not live. Language on a live form that blocks a Quebec customer today is heat. Language as a future add-on is email. Not heat: a wallet user who has not installed MetaMask yet. That is a guide. A wallet user who signed and got an empty server response on a weekday may be heat if they cannot use email instead.

If you are wrong about heat, the worst outcome is that we ask you to write. If you are wrong the other way — emailing a dead cart on a Friday and waiting — the worst outcome is a weekend of lost CAD. Prefer the phone when money is stuck. Prefer email when a number must be approved. Prefer Square when two people need to hear the same sentence at once. We will tell you if you picked the wrong door. We will not punish you for calling when the cart is dead.

The phone is weekdays, Pacific time. Evenings and weekends, write the dashboard notes and admin@sycgeeks.ca. If you have care, we are already watching the jobs that move money; still leave the URL and the timestamp. If you do not have care, Monday is when a human reads the thread. We will not publish a second emergency number. We will not staff a Saturday sales line. We will not pretend a Halifax Friday at 6 p.m. is still Friday afternoon in Vancouver. Geography is a clock, not a slight.

If your only approver lives in Montreal and can only speak at 9 a.m. Eastern, book the overlap. Do not call the emergency line at 6 a.m. Pacific to “catch us early” with a brief. That is how heat gets a busy signal. If your launch is on Eastern time and our studio is still closed, write the night before with the exact hour the cart must work. We would rather decline a fantasy timezone than miss a real one. Same rule as timelines in a brief.

Statutory holidays in British Columbia close the weekday line even if Ontario is open. If your Ontario HST launch sits on a BC holiday, say so in the brief weeks ahead. We will not discover that calendar on the morning. English and French do not change the clock. They change who must be in the booked hour. Put the language on the booking. Put the heat on the phone. Put the quote in email. Three sentences. Three doors.

Students call if they cannot get in — orientation stuck, hour log refusing to save after steps are done, wallet nonce empty and email login also failing on a weekday. Students write if the question is “how do I describe this work.” Students book if a mentor hour was offered. Students do not call to ask whether 0.25 hours is allowed; it is, up to 24, with a factual description. “Worked on stuff” will be sent back in any channel. The log is capacity, not a timesheet to game.

Merchants call if the live store or the dashboard that holds money is down. Merchants write for briefs, add-ons, and notes. Merchants book for reviews and decisions. Guests — no account yet — write or book. Guests call only if they are mid-launch with us and the production URL is dead; a stranger with a new idea uses email. Wallet or email login does not change the doors. It only changes where the record lands after. Pick the role before you connect a wallet. Existing wallets keep their role.

We refuse to open a fourth door. No hidden Slack. No Instagram DM as a project file. No text thread that replaces the dashboard. You can mention a text in the notes; the decision still goes in the notes. Square, Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Interac e-Transfer, and optional ETH are payment rails, not support rails. Paying on a rail does not entitle a Saturday phone call unless care is watching that rail. The doors stay three. The file stays one.

A call about a dead cart should end with a note in the project: what broke, what we changed, whether it is care or a new quote. A booked hour should end with a written next step: a CAD number, a missing screenshot, a workflow step that moved. An email brief should end with a scoped quote or a list of missing sentences. If you leave any door with “we’ll circle back,” the door failed. Ask for the sentence. We will write it.

Care sits beside all three doors. Defects in the support window come from the reserved hour. New scope is a published add-on on the same project, cheaper by about a quarter if care is on the account. We will not silently fold extra weeks into care. If you are unsure which bucket you are in, ask in email — the answer is a sentence, not a new contract. Do not occupy the weekday line to ask that sentence unless the live path is also down.

Fire, brief, or conversation. Phone +1 (672) 200-7924 on a weekday for fire. admin@sycgeeks.ca for a brief we can price. Square for a conversation on Pacific time, no account required. That is how a studio that invoices in CAD, ships two official languages, and still answers a human line stays usable. Pick the door. Bring the facts. We will meet you on the other side with a file, not a vibe.