Darren Jamieson: On this episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m probably going to get myself into trouble — potentially a lot of trouble. I put a post on LinkedIn a while back, and we’ll put a link to that below this podcast. It’ll be in the description, or if you’re watching on YouTube, it’ll be in the YouTube description or in the show notes on iTunes, Spotify — whatever you’re watching or listening on. We’ll put the link to the LinkedIn post where I talked about people in networking groups who don’t pay — people you end up working with who basically owe you money. They end up on your debtor’s list, decide they’re not going to pay, disappear, and you end up out of pocket. What happens then?
In the UK — and I’ve got listeners in the US and other countries as well — we tend to have this attitude where we don’t like to say bad things about people. We don’t like to kick up a fuss or air dirty laundry in public. We like to keep things quiet, sweep it under the carpet, and avoid saying bad things about people if we don’t have to. I get that — it’s a UK mentality and that’s fine. But what it means is when people in networking groups or organisations either don’t pay, or they do a [expletive] job — maybe you’ve hired a plasterer who’s completely screwed up your house (that wasn’t hypothetical, by the way) — you lose a load of money because you have to get it all ripped off and redone by somebody else. Do you let other people know that’s happened? That they were [expletive], the job was terrible, you had to get it redone, and you lost a lot of money? Do you tell people that? No, we typically don’t in the UK.
The problem then is they get recommended and referred to someone else, and that person uses them and has a similar experience. They’re like, “Oh my god, that was terrible. Why didn’t anybody tell me?” This happened to us earlier this year — or the start of last year, earlier this year — where we ended up working for somebody in a networking group.
I alluded to this on a previous podcast where I talked about things you shouldn’t do as a web designer, and one of them was “don’t copy another website.” If a client comes to you and says, “This is the website we’ve got; I want you to do exactly the same for this one,” you should never do it. It was because of this instance that we now have that rule. If a client comes to us and says, “Copy this website,” we will not do it now.
We did this for this particular client who came to us and said, “I’ve got this website; I want you to copy it exactly for this new business.” I didn’t know that’s what had been asked. One of our guys did that, and the client didn’t like it. One of the criticisms was that it showed no originality whatsoever. Well, of course it [expletive] didn’t — we did exactly what you asked us to do. We copied the website you wanted us to copy. What do you expect? You can’t copy it and have it magically look original. This went on for some time and, as with some people who have this kind of attitude, they decided to go quiet — didn’t reply to emails or calls, missed payments, and it snowballed.
Eventually we had to follow our processes. We’ve got very good debt collection processes created by the wonderful David Harrington Wright — for those who know him — who sadly passed away a while back. He was a lovely guy in debt collection. He created all our processes for when people don’t pay — which happens. So we followed all of this as you’d expect, and we got the, “Oh, I didn’t get that paperwork because that’s not my address,” and the guy was moving around different addresses. Eventually he came up with the excuse that he didn’t see the contract or the terms and conditions. We use a system called Better Proposals — I recommend anyone in a service-based industry look at it. With Better Proposals, we create the proposal online; it gets sent to the potential client; they log in. We get a notification as soon as they’ve logged in; it tells us who logged in and on what device — iPhone, PC, tablet, Mac — we can see that. Interesting point: people are more likely to sign a proposal on a desktop than on a phone. Point of note.
We can see when they’ve logged in and which pages of the proposal they’ve looked at. We could see he’d gone through the terms and conditions and how long he spent on each page, so we knew that was a lie.
It went to court, and it got really nasty
We ended up losing a load of money from it. I thought, “I never want to deal with this absolute scumbag again.”
Then I found out he’d done this before. I didn’t want to broadcast it because you come off as the bad guy if you start talking about people who’ve ripped you off — you look bitter. I know he’s been slagging me off to other people — I know this for a fact because they’ve told me. He’s not as popular as he thinks. You’ll notice I’ve not named him here and I’m not going to. If you’re waiting for me to name the person, I’m not going to — so rest assured that’s okay. I’m not getting into trouble for that one.
But he has been slagging us off, saying we weren’t creative, we didn’t create a website for him, look how [expletive] it was. It’s because we did exactly what he asked us to do — it’s in the proposal. This is what you wanted, so this is what we did. So [expletive] you. And yeah, he didn’t pay. I didn’t announce this around a networking group because it’s not a good thing to do — not a good look. It doesn’t reflect well on me or on us if I start doing that.
Then it turns out he wanted to come along to my networking meeting. He wanted to visit. The absolute balls of the man — he wanted to come in and visit. It’s like, what the [expletive]? You’ve ripped us off, you owe a shitload of money, you lied in court, and now you want to turn up to my [expletive] networking meeting and stare me in the eye? No. So I had to explain why that would be a bad idea.
Then someone else in our networking group came forward and said, “Oh yeah, he’s done that before.” What? He’s done that before — in another group, in another region — he’s ripped off quite a few people and left owing them all money. What? Why didn’t I know that? If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have worked with the [expletive] in the first place. If I’d known his MO was not to pay people and then disappear owing money, I wouldn’t have touched him with a barge pole.
We’ve had a few like that over the years where we’ve thought, “I’m not so sure about you,” so we’ve asked previous digital marketing agencies or web designers they’ve worked with and been told, “Oh yeah, don’t worry about that guy — he won’t pay,” and we’ve managed not to touch them. But this guy — we didn’t know. And this is the problem. This is the whole point of my LinkedIn post and this podcast. I’m not here naming someone — I’m not going to do that; that’s not what I’m about. What I want to know is: what would you do about it? Do you tell people if somebody rips you off? Do you tell people what they’ve done — not to badmouth them, but to warn others in case it happens to them?
Because there was someone in our group saying, “Oh, he seems nice.” Whoa. If you work for him, make sure he pays you up front. I know there are a lot of people who get ripped off, and some businesses can’t take it. Some businesses, if they don’t get paid, it’s a real problem. Maybe they can only do one or two jobs at a time. In particular industries — like, for example, an electrician working on his own doing a house rewire — he’s doing that for, what, a week? Five days? Maybe two weeks if it’s a big house. If he doesn’t get paid for that, that’s half the month’s work gone — really detrimental.
There are industries where not getting paid can destroy your business. With us, luckily, we’ve got over a hundred web design clients — something like 200 clients in total. One person not paying us isn’t going to break us. It’s a drop in the ocean. But it’s the principle. If he does that to someone else, it could break them — devastating to their business. I don’t want that to happen. There are people in our networking group who really need paying clients who pay on time — we all do, really — and I don’t want them to suffer the same as we did.
So what’s your take on this? I’d love to know — drop comments below the YouTube video for this. If you’re not watching on YouTube, the link will be on the podcast page. What would you do about this? Would you out them? Would you say, “It’s this person, they didn’t pay,” because it is a fact — I could do that, there’s nothing stopping me. But I don’t really want to broadcast that to the world because it won’t reflect well on me. Do you tell people in confidence? Do you tell your networking group so they all know not to use that person or go into business with them — because there’s a very high likelihood they won’t get paid if they do? What’s your take on this?
Why, as a society, do we hide away from this?
Do we keep quiet when someone does something like this? Do we just not tell people — which opens the door for others to get ripped off as well? I think I’ve got away with this; I don’t think I’ve got myself into any legal trouble, but I’ll have the editors check this over just in case. And I’ll catch you on the next podcast.
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
LinkedIn Post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/darrenjamieson_when-you-get-ripped-off-by-someone-who-doesnt-activity-7371465132109111297-owX5/
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
