David Kellam

It pours.

7:30am-11:00am
Botched hard drive migration.
Attempting to recover. Downtime costs client organisation.

11:00am-12:30pm
A Docklands client urgently needed a presentation saved from PhotoStory. Easy. Just annoying timing
(And none of my ‘contractors’ (i.e. friends) were available!)

12:30pm-12:45pm
Ate a really bad muffin from Waterfront City. Don’t go to the place next to Red Rooster. Not at all fresh. Blueberry aparently - makes it difficult to tell whether the blue specs are miniscule berries or mould. (The only thought getting me through this is that cheese can be deliberately mouldy. Of course, this wasn’t cheese).

12:45pm-2:00pm
Called Ben in to solve server booting issues. Turns out I overlooked some of the physical setup issues (after I had pulled everything apart). I should have noticed during boot that hda and hdc had swapped themselves over and hence refused to boot.
Server now boots and is mirroring data (120GB to 250GB drive).

2:00pm-3:15pm
Helping an old lady with her Mac. Relatively rewarding; she’s thrilled! (More at being able to photocopy using her multi-function printer than anything else heheheh).

I taught her triple-clicking. I told her to feel important: not many people know that. She was thrilled

3:30pm-3:45pm
Finally get home and check my e-mail. Have a response from the client I sacked. It reads,

“David,

Jodie and I have decided to pay the full amount on the invoice that we professionally requested you reconsider (transferred today). Unfortunately, you obviously tend to take business personally and have behaved in a distasteful manner.

Life Resolutions will no longer be requiring your services.

We wish you all the best with your future business relationships.

Please refrain from contacting myself or Jodie again.”

I’ll spare you the full correspondence, but let’s just say that 2 months after final payment is due on 2 invoices (continually ignoring my requests for status updates during this time), the client decides to complain about one invoice. They didn’t want to pay for what they perceived as fixing this same service twice (wireless networking at their apartment). I replied pointing out that, in fact, of the 2.5 hours I was there, less than 30 minutes was spent on wireless, and that even then I never touched the router and only Mary’s laptop, which was set up (by her) to connect to Azure or some other open access points. Which didn’t route. Problem? PEBCAK. Anyway, 2 hours was spent fixing another laptop which had dodgy wireless drivers and a tonne of spyware. I pointed this out as politely as I could.

I hear nothing. They pay the other invoice (undisputed) two days later. I reply saying “Thanks for the payment” and requesting a status update on the other invoice, saying I expected it to go through at the same time, based on the info provided (i.e. that the invoice was not what they thought it was for, and hence ‘legitimate’). After a week of no response, I then inform them I don’t appreciate being stuffed around, and she replies saying she’s “taken some days off” and “tend to be fairly busy” whilst accusing me of sending “the second immature and inapropriately (sic) toned email”.

I then sack the client, informing them that I consider their behaviour disappointing, etc given my frequent after-hours, emergency, prompt & often discounted service. and will be performing no further work for them. She sent the above e-mail, obviously convinced they are not at all at fault, and trying to “sack me back”. Score none for them.

Anyway, I won’t bother replying. She clearly doesn’t get it. Anyway, they requested I not contact either of them again. Still, doesn’t stop me blogging about it.

AVOID LIFERESOLUTIONS

they are an UNETHICAL business
Jodie Brenton and Mary Magalotti (the directors) are expolitative business practitioners and you should avoid their companies like the plague.

It’s really disappointing to deal with companies that don’t pay on time, don’t respond to requests about when they will, fail to act on it when they promise to, dispute invoices months after they are sent, abuse my goodwill and accuse me of actions that they are really guilty of.

They’re not the only ones. I have another (ex) client who refuses to pay a consulting bill because they think it should be free. You just don’t want to do work for those organisations. Another client last week paid me the day I sent the invoice. I returned the next day, and worked for free to fix something up. I went out of my way to help him. Paying suppliers on time PAYS DIVIDENDS! What do you save by stretching out payments by a few months? A few % in interest, a little better cashflow? What do you lose? If my experience is anything to go by:

• discounts
• free labour/advice
• prioritised service
• extra goodies - free hosting, smtp authentication, network cables, etc.
• and lots more

and most importantly, respect. Sometimes I lose faith in humanity.

3:45pm-5:45pm
Workaround for mail downtime results in fetchmail deleting mail read using mail2web.com.
Attempts to recover (logs, IE cache, ISP, etc.) failed.
Resolution?Awaiting list of e-mail addresses sent since 5pm yesterday from ISP. Will cross-reference with received addresses to create list of missing mail.

5:45pm…
To top if off, a myDataHub client cancels his service. We’re down to a very small number of paying clients now :(.

Lessons Learned

Don’t succumb to client pressure to have a workaround in place ASAP. Plan the workaround as sufficiently as you plan the original downtime. i.e. If I had been strong enough to just say “no mail for you for two hours”, the deletion would not have happened.
(The other errors were within the planning scope).

Of course, the other lesson is just don’t stuff up

And then there’s “don’t do business with people who don’t respect you”. It’s hard when it involves an effective pay cut, but worth it in the end, I believe. Life is too short.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 30th, 2006 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.