I got hosed. Hammered, even, by someone who wanted to be a client of my nascent business. I was asked to do & organize work for a guy who was going to help his (honestly) used car, MLM, Real Estate and Mortgage businesses all at the same time. Something didn’t jive–and not just because of the professions.
I couldn’t place it–there was something wrong with the approach, and I was uncomfortable. Right now, though, I’m behind on my profitability goal. I’ve made decent revenue this year, more than expected, but I’m not currently good at estimating jobs for subs. (There is a lot of variance in small jobs.) So, I’ve paid out about 70% of revenue, +/-, which has caused me some angst. Like anything, it’s easy for a realtor to brag about their GCI…but piss it all away on ads. It’s part of the process. As I acquire skill, I’ll get out of it quickly…or at least that’s the hope.
There were questions that were a little off, and there was an attitude that was just a little wrong. But still, we proceeded, and I was paid the initial deposit on time and without incident. Generally, I follow the rule where you can be slow to pay or be a dick, but not both. Still, I was uncomfortable, and I remember thinking specifically that there was something coming to bite me in the ass.
Two weeks go by and I’m on the hook for delivering a set of blogs. The roadmap called, though, for him to have done some work. I called for it. “What, you don’t have my blog done?” I blew it off–”remember, you needed to provide me with copy.” “Let me see what you have.”
I had nothing. I knew I had nothing. So I said, “I have nothing. We’re in waiting-on-you mode.”
“You took my money and haven’t done anything with it? You #!%!ing thief.”
At that point, I was out. Done. I had sent reminders through basecamp and had done the setup accurately. But I wasn’t going to be called a @$^ing anything. I wrote the book on #@%$, anyway.
So I said, “I’ll just refund your money, and we’ll call it a day, fair enough.”
Fine, he said…but he’d need a check.
A check I provided, and then…
…he charged back his credit card. For those of you who aren’t in merchant services and haven’t dealt with that, chargebacks are one of the things that customers do when they are extra pissy and claim that they’ve not gotten their work handled. So, he got his check, and then claimed he never got the goods.
I called him, “Hey, this is pretty serious stuff here,”
“You’re just lucky I didn’t sue you,” he said.
Maybeso. He hadn’t had too many plaintiff’s suits here in Franklin county. And, if we’re going to get all mafia on people, I’m probably, honestly, the last guy who is to be crossed.
Sometimes I take the path most bloody and go there. My instinct told me to get away from this guy, so I said, “I’m not negotiating, you need to call merch services and undo the chargeback, and say it was your fault. This will become credit card fraud otherwise.”
I hung up.
And, I did have to deal with him one more time on a conference call with Paypal. I ate about $80 worth of junk fees, had my PP account tied up for about 10 days…while the drama played out.
The whole thing was my fault.
I knew the guy was off. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. I knew that this was going to end badly, and I needed to be gone. The problem was that this was a job where 85% of the revenue woulda stayed with me.
So let me ask you:
[poll id="2"]
The other thing I’d like to know is this: How can you detect when a deal is going awry?
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