bad customers and court cases

Thu Jan 30 14:16:20 PST 2003

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003 alvin at maggie.linux-consulting.com wrote:
> just curious if any of you have taken your ex-clients to
> court ( small claims in my case )

I've yet to actually end up in court, but I've certainly had to go through
the preliminaries before.

> anyway .. they didnt pay their invoices..
> 	so i filed suit... and the fun starts

Did you have written documentation of what they expected you to do, and
what the completion criteria were?

> they in turn claiming all kinds of jibberish for non-payment
> long after 1-2 month the contract ended
>
> - one of their made up invoices is to bill me for not providing
>   passwds ... that they spent $3500 to get root acces amongst
>   3 people w/ PhDs

Did you provide them with password? (not how to change them, but with the
passwords?), and was that specified in your written scope of work?

> 	but their wanna-be nt weinnies dont get it...some of them
> 	w/ PhDs ... actually lots of um "claim" to have PhDs
>
> - and it took them 3 weeks to move a working lan from the old office
>   to their new offices...
> 	- i say just change the wan ip# on the router and they would
> 	have been done
>
> - other hilarious part ... they moved their dns servers at
> 	networksolutions and blame me and billed me for going offline :-)
> 	( they had fri-sat-sun to make sure its all right.. but didnt do
> 	so )
>
> = anyway... how you can help ??

I'm going to sound dreadfully patrician for a momment. If you're working
as a consultant, you have to leave the BOFH attitude at home. I know that
this list isn't necessarily one that your client subscribes to - but it's
absolutely amazing how far one misaimed comment can go.

> 	- please forward me offline, that you can get into a linux
> 	box ( when you're sitting in front of it ) ... that you can
> 	get into any linux box in a matter of 2-3 minutes
> 	( few seconds from the lilo prompt )
> 		- only first names will be used to show that
> 		people ( competent ones ) can get into any linux box in
> 		a few minutes

*blink* I think that I'm missing something here. Am I correct in reading
that you want professional sysadmins to send you documented evidence of
being able to easily hack into a linux box for entry into the court
record?

> -- putting on the asbestos just in case :-)

I'm going to flame a little bit here. I empathize strongly with the desire
to get paid for the work that you've done. It really sucks to get stiffed.

_However_

If you're doing consulting work, you desperately need a written scope of
work that both parties have signed off on, with completion criteria. That
way, there's no ambiguity about whether the job has actually been performed
as desired.

To turn things around:

"We hired a consultant that came in and did a bunch of stuff for us.  Since
then, our office LAN has been down for weeks, we can't login to our linux
boxes (and haven't been given passwords either!), our website hasn't been
reachable, and the consultant keeps on telling us that we're all idiots.

Obviously, since we've had so many problems, we don't want to pay the
consultant until they're all fixed - so now s/he's taking us to court!"

Sounds like a pretty justifiable complaint to me.

Perhaps you can add some more details about what work was expected, so
that it's clearer that your complaint is justified.

cheers!
==========================================================================
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