I signed a business agreement with someone about 2 years ago, and was looking forward to the arrangement being smooth. It hasn’t been so far – the other party simply hasn’t fulfilled their end of the agreement. The more I looked at the original language, I realized it was fairly one-sided (probably typical in this case), and there’s very little the other party can do which would actually terminate the agreement (relative to the restrictions placed on me_).
The other day I had to take one of the few recourses left to me: I had to send a registered letter outlining the agreement violations. The other party now has *30 days* (from receipt of the letter!) to rectify the situation (which really shouldn’t be hard at all). I’m really sad it’s come to this, and would much rather the agreement simply be terminated at this point, but I suspect the letter of the agreement will be fulfilled and I’ll be ‘stuck’ continuing to carry on.
I’ve had another situation a couple years ago where I wasn’t paid. I was sorely tempted to “name and shame” that company I dealt with, but many blog readers here commented that I shouldn’t, as it was ‘unprofessional’ to do so (as if not paying your bills and continually screwing over a string of outside contractors and lying to clients and contractors alike *is* professional somehow). ”Take the high road, don’t name”, etc. I didn’t name names then, but I did file a lawsuit (which 18 months later is still not even on the docket yet!). Someone searching for me could put the 2 together and figure out who the other party is in that case, but I didn’t explicitly name. However, by not naming in that case, I feel like I’ve been complicit in allowing other contractors to potentially get duped by the same operation, and probably get bilked out of tens of thousands of dollars.
In this case, I faced the same question – “name and shame” or “take the high road”. I’ve found out that, again, I’m not the only one who is being treated the same way. From what I can tell, it’s almost as if the other party thinks of the business side of things as something that just happens by accident, instead of something that takes systemic, repeatable operations. However, as frustrated as I’ve been with missed deadlines and ignored emails, I’m not going to name names here either, at least yet. I do know that other people are continuing to be hurt by the lack of professionalism, but from my standpoint, I’ve not gone through the ‘official resolution’ procedure (the only one available to me short of a general lawsuit). So, if the matter is resolved, I may end up saying nothing more on the matter, albeit grudgingly so.
Do you have any horror stories you’d care to share (with or without naming names?)
