Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it By the end of a working week, it can be tempting to just blow up whatever tech you've toiled for days to tame. Which is why each Friday The Register offers a (hopefully) cathartic installment of On Call, the reader-contributed column in which you share your tetchiest tech support tales. This week meet a reader we'll Regomize …
Working for a small instrumentation outfit a good many years ago, we used to get an occasional swathe of enquiries for spares for a project, usually in a certain geographical area. The routine was usually that an original end user would advertise the need for spares, which would be picked up by a host of one man bands specialising in sourcing odd bits and pieces.
Our outfit had a thorny relationship with one of the small procurement houses. The guy would, effectively, give you an abridged spec for a grain of sand and be on the phone the next day, demanding to know where his detailed quote for a whole planet would arrive. Well, not actually, but you get the idea. At one time he did succeed in winding up one of our internal sales guys to such a pitch that the chap came off the phone, said nothing, walked out of the office and drove to a hilly beauty spot nearby to calm down for a half hour or so. But I digress.
In the instance I'm thinking of, the irritating customer had actually been successful in winning the spares order from the foreign end user and tried to order on us. He baulked when we insisted on payment for the small order by Irrevocable Letter of Credit, so our Finance director simply insisted on cash. That didn't go down well either but the customer eventually relented as he was over a barrel and said he'd send his secretary.
The person who arrived was an absolutely stunning and delightful young lady: tall, elegant, with long curled hair, delicately tinted glasses and the almost obligatory tan secret agent overcoat. She could have stepped straight out of a 70s spy movie. It kinda made up for some of the angst.
I heard of a contractor who was asked to quote for a job. The contractor didn't want the job but reluctantly submitted a quote after applying an eye-watering mark up (Several hundred percent I was led to believe). The contractor was gobsmacked when the client immediately turned around and said "When can you start?"
The contractor didn't want the job - but the amount of money they were going to make was too large to turn down.
We all have a price, don't we?
I know someone who was asked to quote on what he thought was a few holes to be drilled through some thick steel on a construction project.
He didn't fancy the job so he vastly over quoted.
He got the job for several hundred thousand holes in the Magnox reactor project that was starting up.
He built his entire business and retired a wealthy man on the results of that one contract.
I had a sort of reverse experience with my second client as a contractor. I did want the job and I knew that they had money, but I was (and still am) crap at negotiating. They asked what my rate was and I named what I thought was a wildly optimistic figure; without missing a beat they asked when I could start, leaving me wondering how far I could have pushed it :-/
"They asked what my rate was and I named what I thought was a wildly optimistic figure; without missing a beat they asked when I could start, leaving me wondering how far I could have pushed it :-/"
Most sole traders don't know how to calculate what they should charge so they have no idea what to quote and what will be fine to end on if it's negotiated.
I've had jobs that paid very well where I quoted a higher than average price since the customer had a tight deadline and it was a bit further than I normally go. Often the price wasn't a huge issue, but getting somebody to show up the next morning was very important so they looked good in the eyes of their client. I go online to do a bit of scouting to understand the job and called them back quickly with a quote. I could have been leaving money on the table, but that doesn't bother me if I'm getting a fair wage for the work. If I would have been top of the budget, the customer might hire me for that one job to get them out of a pickle and put me on the "call when desperate" list. I really like steady clients since it's less stressful to be working all of the time for a moderate wage than working sometimes for top dollar.
I remember in my early days of IT, I was in my mid 20's and it was the early 2000's. An agency called about a contract and said they were paying £25/hr which at the time was brilliant money for some one like me.
So I jumped at it... only later on did I realise that they were probably charging the company £40/hr and other people I was working with were getting £30/hr.
Still, I was living in a large council flat, so rent was cheap, no loans, mortgage or credit cards to deal with. For the first time in my life, I was able to really build up my savings. When the contract came to an end the following April... I took the next few months off.
We were asked to submit a bid for a project that we reckoned a 'good' price would be £2 million. We really didn't want the job so we quoted £22 million (I'm not joking). The end-user was not short of money but they were not renown for paying their bills on time. Anyway, the next thing that happens is that the contractor and consultant are bearing down on us for 'more detail'. We did a serious review of what we had offered. What had we missed in the specification? Baffled, we investigated further (we had good contacts). It seemed that we were the only company that quoted; or at least the only company who presented a bid with credible content.
Our saviour was requiring 50% up-front payment; we knew that if we were awarded the project there would be very high initial costs which would be difficult to recoup if the main contractor went bust..... Their specification stated: 'Final payment will be made when the equipment is operational'.
The job went ahead some years later with a different contractor (I think our solution was better). As far as I know, it is still not operating more than six years later. The machinery is still visible via Google Earth, unloaded but uninstalled on a dockside....
"We were asked to submit a bid for a project that we reckoned a 'good' price would be £2 million. We really didn't want the job so we quoted £22 million"
Money can make some hassles more palatable, but there are cases where it's better to just slowly back away.
I had a job where I had a "feeling" about the customer's MD, so I negotiated staged progress payments. We had to chase all of them, and the final payment was not forthcoming. He tried to get additional work done that was way outside the original spec, before he would authorize payment. I sent him a final demand that was ignored. I ”Dun and Bradstreet"ed them, and was told that he had form for this; and that he would probably pay a portion "without prejudice" if threatened with a legal letter. I did, and he did. I cashed the cheque immediately, and sent an invoice for the missing monies. He then phoned me and said that he would pay that if I did the additional work. I said that I would, but would send a quote for it which needed payment up front. He refused. Some months later I got a request from him to expand the system. I told him that it required settlement of the balance, and payment up front for the new work. He wanted to pay half up front and seemed surprised when I refused. I heard later that he had employed a different company for a rewrite. He stiffed them too.
By asking you for more work he has effectively admitted you are competent and he has no right to withhold payment for the work already done. If you have that request in writing then you would easily win a court case to get your money. This exact same thing happened to us and our solicitor was over the moon when the customer asked for more work.
"She could have stepped straight out of a 70s spy movie. It kinda made up for some of the angst."
You didn't realise she was the real chief and the other guy was just a front man? And haven't you noticed the same cars following you around ever since?
Ahh yes..
I have deleted a user laptop object out of active directory as they p1$$ed me off many moons ago.
Story goes....
Call log X isn't working, unable to fix via remote, asked user to come onto site, User said far to busy and will get back to me.
User then logs a complaint issue not fixed, So repeat step above,
I then go on leave, but before I delete the laptop.
This then kills the laptop from AD and direct access stops working.
Then they are forced in (And to make sure I reset their password)
I've dealt with clients who were reluctant to pay their bills a few times.
Our ultimate sanction was our ability to revoke their accreditation with a certain government agency, which would immediately remove their ability to conduct business legally and provoked a tortuous re-accreditation process complete with audits of past actions.
Just mentioning it had an almost 100% success rate and payments were pretty much immediate, I only had to actually use it once
Similar situation, but from the other end. Bailiffs turned up at the office this morning to seize goods.
Company had sacked local staff and off-shored the admin/accounts/HR. It seems that no-one was dealing with the local taxes, etc.
Finance dept. are at the route of this issue, as with most issues companies face.
In your case it was a lack of attention to detail, but there are enough non-English speaking natives around who might understandably confuse the spelling of similar sounding words. People who can speak in multiple languages astound me.
I worked with a good-looking French chap who sent an email with the phrase "You'll all have to bare with me while I sort this out" - I managed to inform him of his error before the production ladies started loosening their garments ...
> That's one of the beauties of the English language, we have so many words which we can use in near-infinite combinations to convey new meaning. I mean, I could say now something like "hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers" and I could know that those words, in that order, had never been said before.
- A misquote of a section of a bit of Fry and Laurie
Just trust me on that one. They were lovely people, but ...
Now, I did work in a couple of Essex based factories decades ago, and some of the production girls were quite stunning. One of them used to sell skimpy underwear as a side hustle, and would unbutton her workwear to reveal said underware adorning her otherwise naked body. She once 'flashed' the production supervisor who was trying to disciplne her for not working, and the poor guy didn't know what to do. He elected to sit in my office for an hour to calm down. The fact that I'm no looker probably helped to dissipate his hormones.
As we used to say back then, "it was all done in the best possible taste". (RIP Kenny)
I had a female student try the same. She had very well developed Bulgarian Funbags for a 15 year old. Every time I roused on her, magically another butoon on he shirt would pop open. Luckily I had a female aide in teh room with me and asked her to have a chat with the young lady - had I said something it would have been "whey are you even looking at my funbags you dirty old pervert"
"bear"v "bare" is a tough one though. Since neither usual use of either spelling obviously indicates a word that means what "bear with" means.
Furry animal or, err, naked one.
And "load bearing"- the closest related other use of that term is not particularly in everyday use outside of construction- least of all in written form.
Don't blame the multi-lingual non-English-native speakers... They usually use the right word because they learned it.
It's the native English speakers you should be more concerned about... I mean, look how homonyms, homophones, plurals and possessives are bandied about interchangeably by people who were *born* to that language and yet still fail to master it!!
Yea, yea, go downvote me already. But you know full well it's true.
It’s when my phone suggests grocer’s apostrophe words which make no linguistic sense I begin to worry. When the correct plural is not offered I really begin to worry. This looks like an AI issue. It has learned that some people use grocer’s apostrophes instead of correct plurals and does not know they are wrong.
even that's incorrect - it's grocers' apostrophes (cue rant about English grammar, but the trailing ' is because it belongs to grocers - plural, not a grocer - singular)
I had a cow-orker who used them freely and would get when I asked "Who is Apple?" etc
Native speakers tend to have learned by listening, spelling came along much later for them, if at all. As an introvert bookworm spelling has always been easy for me, pronunciation on the other hand...
What gets me about ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers is that a lot of the teachers like to teach them abbreviations for things that I've never seen native speakers abbreviate, like 'sth' for something or 'sb' for somebody.
I don't buy as many physical books as I used to, because there's so much available for free for my Kindle. But of course, a lot of that free content is works that have not been professionally copy-edited, because that cosst money. And by far the biggest grammatical issue I see is confusion of homophones. Some books are nigh unreadable because of the internal wince that is generated each time I see it happen. Most are not so bad, of course. But I will note that if you're going to make a word foundational to your story and repeat it many, many times, it's a good idea to make sure you are using the correct version of that word.
my favourite example of this was a book where the vampire elder would become immune to all damage ( and any consequence of his own stupidity ) by becoming insolvent.
Just because the evil clown can doesn't mean fantasy creations get to do it too..
Back in the days of dial-up Internet, one small, local ISP used to replace web pages of customers who took the piss with a "custom 404" page based on the one built into MSIE, but with one of the reasons for unavailability being "The owner of the website might have been disconnected for non-payment of bills".
That page never had to stay up past lunchtime -- prompt payment always ensued.
Like the old telephone line status given to callers who asked why they couldn't get though to someone: they were told it was "Temporarily out of service" which actually meant "hasn't paid their phone bills". In BT we would refer to such a line as having been "TOS'ed" (these days we'd have had name for the subscriber as well).
""The owner of the website might have been disconnected for non-payment of bills"."
You have to be careful about that sort of thing these days. I know I get an annoying call from the cable company if I'm late with the phrase "The status of the account has changed". It would be so much easier if they 1) emailed me a reminder, 2) just said they've not received payment. I sometimes don't get everything paid up before I need to leave town on a job. If they had the option of paying quarterly at a discount, I'd do that.
Below is the relevant law.
Conditions 1A & 1B are met, as is section 2 A-C. So yes, as per section 6A it's a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment for six months, or an unlimited fine if handled summarily at a Magistrates Court. Or as allowed by 6C if the case is heard at a Crown Court then it's punishable by imprisonment for up to 10 years, or an unlimited fine.
Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act:-
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/3
Unauthorised acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, operation of computer, etc.
(1)A person is guilty of an offence if—
(a)he does any unauthorised act in relation to a computer;
(b)at the time when he does the act he knows that it is unauthorised; and
(c)either subsection (2) or subsection (3) below applies.
(2)This subsection applies if the person intends by doing the act—
(a)to impair the operation of any computer;
(b)to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer; [F2or]
(c)to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data; [F3or
(d)to enable any of the things mentioned in paragraphs (a) to (c) above to be done.]]
(3)This subsection applies if the person is reckless as to whether the act will do any of the things mentioned in paragraphs (a) [F4to (d)][F4to (c)] of subsection (2) above.
(4)The intention referred to in subsection (2) above, or the recklessness referred to in subsection (3) above, need not relate to—
(a)any particular computer;
(b)any particular program or data; or
(c)a program or data of any particular kind.
(5)In this section—
(a)a reference to doing an act includes a reference to causing an act to be done;
(b)“act” includes a series of acts;
(c)a reference to impairing, preventing or hindering something includes a reference to doing so temporarily.
(6)A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable—
(a)on summary conviction in England and Wales, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding [F5the general limit in a magistrates’ court] or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to both;
(b)on summary conviction in Scotland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding [F612] months or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to both;
(c)on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or to a fine or to both.
The same applies to almost every piece of electronic kit available today.
"Computer" in this context refers to a "Computational Device" - i.e. a PC, server, laptop, tablet, phone, e-reader and so on, other crap that uses a microcontroller or similar to perform fixed functions does not count as a "Computer".
You wouldn't call a Tamagotchi a "computer" but it has far more computational power than NASA used to get Apollo 11 to the Moon and back.
You'd need to have a court rule on it. I wouldn't bet my freedom on a ruling that it isn't a computer, not when the functions have been explained, including the fact that it could be logged into, wiped, reprogrammed etc. Even more so when you reflect it may well include server functions such as DHCP..
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"Another important word is "computer". All the wording of the regulation refers to computers but not specific ancillary equipment so does restoring a router to it's factory settings count "
With that argument, you'd have to hope the judge sees any difference. Piss them off and they'll interpret the law to include "computer system" which would be inclusive of all ancillary equipment.
If you are on the defense, trying all of the technicalities you can think of to get off doesn't have as much downside as it will if you are the plaintiff, but only to a point. The stack of cases sitting on the clerk's desk is something the judge wants to clear off by quitting time if possible since there will be a new stack the next day. If the judge feels as if time is being wasted by somebody trying out new and novel arguments that make little sense to them, they won't be amused.
"Computer" is indeed an important word, it's right there in the title of the Act, and *nowhere* does it give an indication of what Parliament thought a computer actually is. It gives the impression that they might have been thinking of digital electronic computers, which would have been a good start, but as it stands it probably takes in everything from nomograms and slide rules to AWS/Azure data centres.
In the 90's a developer fed up with a particular client did an update for that specific client which required that a code be entered every 30 days. The client got a criminal conviction on the developer and IIRC the developer did jail time, despite a note in the EULA.
If you think that your going to break criminal law based on implied permission under section 9000 of a civil contract that nobody reads then you'd better hope that you don't end up in front of a judge in a criminal case arguing that, because courts are of the opinion that they decide what contracts mean, and a civil contract saying that you reserve the right to commit criminal offenses will go down really, really badly in a criminal court, which at best will treat it as being a confession to the crime being partly pre-meditated which will get you heavier punishment.
By established case law, somebody employed with access to everything is fine to use that for customer support. When they used that access to retrieve data (how much people were paid) then despite permissions on an access control list then they were convicted under the computer misuse act for unauthorised access and the argument that they had access rights that included the data was dismissed as a defence because their access to that data was not authorised by the business. If that's what courts rule, how do you think they are going to rule against what the court is going to fairly correctly see as an extortion scheme?
Demanding payment and refusing to do any further work until your paid is completely and absolutely fine.
Demanding payment, refusing to do any further work until you are paid and threatening to take the client to the small claims court is completely and absolutely fine.
Demanding payment and securing it by disabling a computer system until you get paid has previously been ruled to be a crime.
I would suggest that everybody upvoting pleasant fantasies of how they would like to behave might wish to learn the basics of how the law actually operates relating to your job if they either work in IT or have any aspiration to work in IT because courts are of the opinion that ignorance of the law is no defence.
Demanding payment and securing it by disabling a computer system until you get paid has previously been ruled to be a crime.
I think it would be down to a court to decide whether this constitutes "disabling a computer system" though, or whether it is withdrawal of a service (through technical means) following non-payment of a contracted debt.
IANAL, and I suspect you aren't either. The only time I've been in a courtroom has been as a juror.
I imagine it would depend on whether said payment is for continued provision of that service, ie. a subscription or license or similar.
If so then it's more reasonable to end provision of said service.
If it's only tangentially related then no, you can't just turn it off.
If you didn't pay your car repair man he is allowed to sue you but not to put sugar in your petrol tank!
You can't "withdraw a service" that you aren't providing. If the client is paying the provider for provision of Internet access AND renting the device from them (where the provider pays the ISP/telco, not the client) then the provider can disable the router because they haven't been paid for the services provided. If the client owns the device, the provider would have to contact the ISP to disable service, as logging into the device for any purpose other than contracted management on behalf of the client, for the client's benefit, is illegal. In any other case, the provider is breaking the law. They can't have the ISP shut off service (again, that is not performing contracted service on behalf of the client). They can't log in and disable anything as that is denial of service and abuse of power, and extortion to boot. (Yes it's fixable without that provider, but not without significant effort and cost when the client depends on having someone else to do it and is losing money in the meantime.) You can't block someone into their driveway by parking on the public street in front of it or call a tow truck to remove their car from the public street just because they haven't paid you for the detailing you did on it.
I suspect that if the provider specifically disables the user connection to the internet through their services, then they would be well within their rights. i.e. by resetting the router they were wrong, but if they reset the user connection password at the provider end, thus preventing connection from the client router, they are covered ( it would be similar to removing access for disabled accounts, a security requirement)
"Demanding payment and securing it by disabling a computer system until you get paid has previously been ruled to be a crime."
I doubt that any cloud vendor cutting off a customer for non-payment is going to get a criminal conviction. And way back in the 80s/90s it was SOP for the packages to require a key to be entered to enable operation for another year. Circumstances alter cases.
What was annoying about one company was that they'd display a message on every user terminal. As we had a serial link between that and another system in order to look things up it wasn't welcome for an unexpected message to come down the line. In the end we understood how their files were structured and read them directly.
A cloud vendor cutting off a customer for non-payment is not going to get a criminal conviction, because that's ceasing to provide a service, probably with contractually required notice in the contract.
What's described in the article is a support company remoting into a customers network and making configuration changes to a system which would otherwise have remained functioning to cause it to cease functioning to force them to pay.
And that's unquestionably criminal as the law stands, as is charging for fixing a problem that they caused. The law says that the correct way to go about securing payment is to send them a letter pointing out that they owe you X, then take them to the small claims court for the money.
in this case they didn't disable, they wiped a configuration on equipment owned by another party that they had access to maintain. Once wiped, they stopped the owner being able to use their own property, effectively initiating a situation that if they didn't pay they couldn't get service back, that in any book is ransom, even if the owner wasn't aware of how the situation occurred.
Depends how you do it. If the customer is delinquent, then they're likely to find themselves an ex-customer. I've done this before and as long as they've been sent reminders and a final demand, ToS'ng them for non-payment is fine. As can be renewing any new contract on new payment terms, or just not renewing them. It gets a bit trickier if there's an ongoing dispute, but if they're not paying for the service, they don't get service. It's also easy to automate, so if billing engine shows late X days, shutdown their interface until finance lifts the hold.
That can also extend to sales activity and I've known a few big names that developed such a bad reputation that nobody wanted to work with them, so they wouldn't get quotes.
It could be considered Termination of Service if the company Iain worked for was the ISP providing the connection but even in that case it would have been problematic to just disable the router without any notice. If Iain's company was doing IT admin/support work only ToS would mean no futher work being done for them, in other words no problems will be investigated or fixed but that doesn't allow them to actively cause problems. Adding a cron job to make sure they need your help on a regular basis is not ok either.
If you own tbe modem they misg assuredly do NOT have that right
That they can do is change your password (or access profile) and force a disconnection from their side
Tbe most effective tool I had as an ISP against delinquent customers was to restrict their access to only have email and the local webserver
People tend to pay attention when attempts to access hotyoungchicks.porn gets a Web page popping up instead that states that bills need to be paid for continued access
At a recent networking event, a local businessman told me quite candidly that they routinely inflate certain client's bills by 15% and then offer a 10% discount if the outstanding debt is cleared within 20 days. Apparently, it works almost every time - and the extra 5% goes a long way to compensate them for the hassle chasing up the few who hold out. Must give it a go myself one day!
I used to work for a large American corporate who were bad payers at the best of times and who unilaterally decided to extend all payments to 60 day terms. We pointed out that the large suppliers wouldn't accept this and we never paid the smaller suppliers that quickly anyway!
At a European Management conference (in a very nice Amsterdam Hotel) we got our opportunity to make the point that getting a few percent discount for 30 day terms (and sticking to them) was far more beneficial than the gain on stretching payments to 60 days - I don't think it made any difference though.
I once worked for a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 company. We were finding ourselves on credit hold from time to time. Supplier's terms might be 2% 10, net 30. The bean counters would take 60 days, and take the discount besides. We engineers leveled with the salesmen, told them that that was the way of the beancounters, there wasn't any way to change it, and to factor it into their pricing. No more credit holds after that.
At another employer, we found ourselves on credit hold after manglement in their indefinite wisdom acquired another firm, which had markers out all over the place. Failure of "due diligence".
An outfit that I have done contract work for, was acquired. Their standard terms were 60 days, but you could join their Rapid Pay program to get paid in 10 days, with a 2% discount. After the acquisition, they changed it from 10 calendar days to 10 business days, and changed the terms from 2% to "whatever the XXX mortgage interest rate index is". But the mortgage rate index is per-annum, and they were applying it to a 46-day period. It worked out to something like 161% APR when I did the math. Usurious! I'll wait the 60 days, thanks.
I used to work for a very small firm that in the construction industry. A lot of the work was specialist remedial work for companies there were already subcontractors themselves, so we were bottom of the payment chain and last to get the money 'released' for payment as it had to wait for snags to be signed off.
Boosting prices and having an 'early payment discount' sat far better than trying to add 'late fees' to a contract, even it it's functionally the same thing.
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The arithmetical pedant in me points out that if something is increased by 15% and that result is reduced by 10%, the end result is 3.5% greater than the original, not 5%!
For example 100 plus 15% is 115; 115 reduced by 10% is 103.5; thus end result is 3.5% greater than the original number.
</pedant>
We had a client who was rumoured to be in financial dire straits.
We offered our services on a prepayment basis but also gave them a small discount (10% or so) for that, so everybody could save face. That was over ten years ago, and they are still a loyal customer.
"That was over ten years ago, and they are still a loyal customer."
Had a customer during the pandemic whose projects were really delayed by that. Was going to do some translations for them but they replied they weren't sure they were still going to be in business for long. I figured that as they were sensible folk I was willing to take a punt on that and told them so. By the time I got round to invoicing things were looking up again, and they paid within a day or two.
The worst payers aren't in Deep Financial Shit, they just tend to do it because they can
In particular it makes Finance departments look good, until it doesn't
I have memories of one particularly large customer I had who had been pulling these games. I griped about it to someone in a social setting and not long afterwards the entire accounting management group of the company were sacked
It turned out the complaints I voiced had gotten back to the owners of the company because the person I'd griped to was a family member. Said owners didn't like what they were hearing, looked into it and found that supplier abuse was costing them dearly in terms of both reputation (suppliers firing customers is a very real thing) and "asshole tax" added costs
What was less amusing was that those abusive practices followed the fired staff to several other companies and caused the demise of at least one of them
I have seen that happen with a small client some years ago. I was on site when another contractor came to do some pest control.
His invoice said X if paid within 30 days, and X - I think 3% if paid immediately. That client immediately paid in cash. And this is a client who has a history of holding invoices unpaid for as long as possible before payment.
Not sure if the original invoices are inflated, but it was something interesting to observe.
Way back I worked for a small software house/hardware dealer and we had a couple of customer who were notorious for only paying invoices when they wanted something else. In one case all they ever bought was a single box of paper at a time, which they'd pay for three months later when they wanted the next box! The trouble was it was a small town and most of the customers were also personal friends of the owner so he'd let them get away with things, such as buying a computer from Dixons instead of from us, but then expecting us to set it up for free. Inevitably the business didn't survive.
Heard a story from a bloke running a small IT consulting business. He had this one client who refused to pay for the server & PCs he'd installed claiming there were problems and incomplete work. One day, he rocked up at the client's office in a van and said he was coming to take away all the PCs and server due to non-payment and their terms of business clearly state that title remains with him until full payment is received. It took the customer a few seconds to realise the bloke wasn't bluffing and was serious about removing all the kit then the customer paid up in full there and then.
If I remember correctly, this sadly isn't legal. To be able to seize the goods from their premises, you need a court order - otherwise they can just refuse to let you in. So they simply have the right to say "nope" - and keep your stuff. It's (Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!) 25 years since I did credit control though so memory may have failed or things may have changed. Of course, if the customer doesn't know this and let's you get away with it, then it isn't a problem anyway.
I think that's why you have the title transfer clause so you're recovering your own property rather than a debt. But then like you say, it still would need a court order if you were refused access. Then probably more legal work to recover any costs. Or it's a service the repo men do for you and sort out the repossession paperwork.
IANAL but my understanding is that the title (ownership) clause changes the legal scenario from (1) recovering items that are not fully paid for, which is contractual arguments more akin to fraud, to (2) recovering items that are still owned but another individual or organisation is preventing access to, which is theft. Theft is generally considered much easier to demonstrate and enforce than fraud.
If title hasn't transferred, then it's not a seizure or "Revenge" - you are merely collecting your property that happens to have been stored on their premises for a while.
While trespass would likely still apply, in most cases that's civil, not criminal, and the contract of sale probably gives the right to collect the items - with some financial penalties.
That's business to business of course. Consumer is totally different.
It is if there's a title transfer clause
Those became far more common in my neck of the woods after a spate of company bankruptcies where the bankruptcies happened just after vendors had made major deliveries and then were stiffed for both payment AND the equipment (Receivers seized and sold it)
As this had a domino effect in small towns, the clauses spread like wildfire after being tested in court. In an interesting related twist, large deliveries late on Fridays were almost universally stopped too
Don't want to go into too much detail for legal reasons.
Company designed and installed automated production line for a major European car parts company. The customer continuously prevaricated on paying the final part of the invoice with nonsensical excuses.
The supplied production line had remote access built in for fault diagnosis etc and it got to the point where, after 6 months of not paying the last 120K Euro bill, the line was shut down with the message on the screen saying line will not be reactivated until full payment is received. Payment was transferred within the hour.
I'd like more guarantees on contracted labour to be binding both ways; so that if the client does anything during the guarantee period which would have given the contractor just cause to withdraw their labour had it occurred while the work was in progress, the contractor has the right to restore the client's equipment to a non-functional state until the grievance is rectified.
Retroactive Industrial Action, if you will.
That has been a fundamental of contract law for as long as there's been lawyers, and why they're a necessary evil. Preferably before contracts are signed because it's always more expensive to try and get out of a contract than have one reviewed. But contracts can also be a bit imbalanced, so big company can pressure small to accept their terms. Small company might want 30 day payment, big, 60 or 90. Then it's up to the small company to accept those terms or not.
It can be one of the least fun parts of business because of that power imbalance and the idea that one party has to 'win' rather than having a mutually beneficial relationship.
But contracts can also be a bit imbalanced, so big company can pressure small to accept their terms. Small company might want 30 day payment, big, 60 or 90.
And then you get the parasites like Greensill who advertise "get paid earlier for just a couple of percent, let us help small business!".
Which actually means the big boys decide to screw their suppliers and subbies by extending their payment terms to 90 or even 180days, and if you want to get paid this year, you have to let Greensill (or the customer's own in-house Reverse Factoring service, *cough*Carillion*cough*) cream off a couple of percent. Meanwhile everyone think's big corp's finances are fantastic because their debt-to-revenue is tiny, ignoring the debt-mountain that is growing with their RF provider ("just one consolidated monthly fee!").
Here's a clue. Pay your f-ing suppliers.
My last job had constant difficulties with this with being a small firm supplying data services to FTSE-100-sized companies. Happily however, since the service was "real time", failure to pay invoices did mean that when the API died, people screamed at accounts1 - loudly and quickly.
1. In fairness, Accounts were very rarely the problem. It's the purchasing manager/POC who hasn't raised the invoice properly or is dragging their heels. If you've got a Purchase Order, Accounts will get it paid.
Yep. All part of the fun. Haven been bitten before, I'd always ask clients what their processes were. Too many things can delay payment before excuses like the CFO has been arrested and the FBI/SEC has just seized all the paperwork. Kinda why I was always nervous dealing with startups. Or just some big companys just having labyrinthine processes (1084Q forms <shudder>). We're trying to pay you but computer says 'No'. At least some regulators are trying to improve things, or at least require filings to show they pay on time.
Honestly, whatever bills are outstanding, this is just "criminal damage" (in the old days) or computer misuse under current legislation.
I'd be leaving any place that did this, and if they're lucky then on my way out I may not tell their client what actually happened and agree to swear to that under oath.
The service being "undone" was not the internet service but the network administration work of setting up the router. Rolling back those settings can't sensibly described as ceasing to supply a service.
If you are the service provider and change configuration settings (usually on your own side and infrastrcuture) to disable access for a client that did not pay his bills and ignored reminders stating his access would be cut if he doesn't pony up is one thing and is something that could be described as "withholding further service".
If you are the outsourced network administrator and your service included setting up the router to access a third party ISP "undoing your service" by reseting the router setup is a different thing and probably illegal and might make you liable for damages caused. This later kind of "undoing your service" is definitely not legal here and i doubt there are many legislations that allow it.
that's a rental agreement fir access to hardware that AWS owns and is in Physical possession of at all times
If you don't understand the difference between that and interfering with equipment owned by the customer, on the customer premises, then I suggest you go back to cartooney school and ask for a fee refund
Even tweaking a customer router which is resident on your premises is unlawful, however you CAN unplug it
"I'd be leaving any place that did this"
Whether it was "the place" that did it would depend on the status of Iain's colleague. If he wasn't part of the management and hadn't done it with the connivance of the management then it's not really the business that had done it.
"and if they're lucky then on my way out I may not tell their client what actually happened and agree to swear to that under oath"
Given that it was hearsay it would be you who'd be lucky, or at least wise, not to do so.
A former boss was a complete parasite, had a penchant for not paying company bills, then trying to squeeze a better deal from what were usually small suppliers who really needed the money. There were a few times that even worked. Until he tried it with the office landlord, who was not a small supplier but a multi- multi-millionaire based in New York (we were in London). Hillariously, our landlord promptly had the building staff change the locks and lock us out. He flatly refused to unlock the doors until the enitre due balance was settled by bank transfer. Couldn't have backfired more appropriately.
I've had to resort to similar tactics 3 times in my career.
In one case, replacing the client's website with a message stating it was down due to non-payment (even used HTTP code 402) - this was after a LOT of chasing. Got paid within a day.
Another case the client was refusing our calls so we 'encouraged' them to call us by changing their ISP login password and rebooting their router - once the situation was resolved we changed their password back and their router connected. All dealt with within half an hour.
Finally a client who would only ever pay an invoice the next time he wanted something. We'd had enough and wanted rid of them, but as the only firm in the area able to deal with kit they'd got we had a responsibility... so when they had an urgent problem we said "that's fine, we can sort it but due to past issues getting invoices paid, we will need payment upfront" - we got told to F off, which we gladly did. What would've been a £100 service call must have cost them >£2500 to replace kit. That business folded about year later.
Well, if they weren't a viable business, they weren't a viable business. Nobody has an automatic right for a business venture to be successful.
See also: Business owners who claim that if they pay their staff a living wage they'll go out of business and everyone will lose their jobs. If your business can't make a profit whilst paying people properly, but it can whilst it doesn't, then you're not in the business you claim you are, you're in the business of exploiting other people by driving them into debt. In this case, you're not a "business owner," you're a parasite profiting off the misery of others.
Had a similar line from a client. I had done the work and the invoice for £lots was seriously overdue.
I had sent reminders and all invoices and statements included (in bold) "We understand and will exercise our statutory right to claim interest and compensation for debt recovery costs under the late payment legislation if we are not paid according to agreed credit terms".
The last time I called them I was told "If we pay you we won't be able to pay our staff" - to which I replied "if you don't pay me, I can't pay me".
They obviously thought, as I was a one-man-band, that they could get away with it.
I contacted a debt collection agency, who, for a fee of £2.50, sent a "letter before action". I have no idea what it said, but funds to cover the invoice, statutory interest and £2.50 fee arrived as soon as it was received.
I later learned that another business that I worked with had the same problem with this lot, so I pointed them to my friendly debt collectors...
Yes, I've called in debt collectors before. The fee was a little more substantial than yours, but the fact that this company had people in all four constituent countries of this land of ours, and who were all 100% up to date on what was legal in their respective jurisdictions (after all, Welsh, Scots and NI law is not always automatically the same as English law), managed to get the payment for my services extracted from the recalcitrant customer pretty sharpish. I was impressed by the speed.
And yes, if debt collection is your nuclear option, go and do it. It's sometimes necessary. And if you're concerned about them not ever doing business with you again - do you care? Would you ever want them as a customer after that? I seriously doubt you would. Small claims court is also good for this kind of thing, provided you are in a jurisdiction where their accelerated procedures apply (and can be used). I always find that sending in the debt collectors is really the last chance saloon, and that I'll gladly take what I can get off that job, and yes, never ever do business with them again.
my friendly debt collector gave me a lot of very useful advice as to the exact wording required on contracts to ensure we got 100% of what was owed and all their fees were on top
Many standard business contracts require the creditor to eat costs and fees associated with collection and whilst 20% of something is better than nothing, 100% of it is better and the debtor's added costs dissuade them from trying it again
(cheque kiting was a particular issue back in the day. It wasn't at all uncommon for a rogue debtor to write cheques and then cancel them before we could bank them later in the day. There was more than one occasion where someone would keep the debtor chatting whilst someone else scooted to the bank branch in question and _cashed_ the cheque. For some reason these kinds of folk didn't like us putting bounced/rejected cheques on display under the front counter glass attached to the bank correspondence. It seems that "insufficient funds" bank stamps can be grounds for defamation proceedings if made public)
My brother had a landscaping business for private homes, but people were notoriously bad at paying.
He saw one of the debtors, who had been ignoring his calls, drinking in a pub one night.
The next morning we sent a (caller ID withheld) SMS to him "We have you on the pub cameras, groping me you drunk b******d!"
There was an immediate reply of "no way".
To which we replied (with Caller ID) "Now that we know your phone does work, and that you have been ignoring me, please pay your bill today!"
"I will drop a cheque off within the hour."
A local stone mason (probably the best in the area) built the wall outside the front of a house I used to own for the previous owner - who did not pay (he was a builder on "account hold" with all the builder's merchants within 150 miles in all directions). The owner came home one day to find the stone being loaded onto the bed of a flatbed truck...
> The next morning we sent a (caller ID withheld) SMS to him "We have you on the pub cameras, groping me you drunk b******d!
[...]
To which we replied (with Caller ID) "Now that we know your phone does work, and that you have been ignoring me, please pay your bill today!"
"I will drop a cheque off within the hour."
I'm surprised you did not title your comment "The Gropes of Wrath" !
There are ways to send SMS without revealing the number, but the recipient cannot reply to such a message. I used to get harassing text messages that were sent via an API that my cellular provider maintained and the messages all came through with a number of all zeros.
But to get a reply I can use an Email to SMS gateway, and if the recipient replies I get their reply back as an email message.
As a contractor I worked for this outfit, one of my earlier contracts. On more than one occasion I worked late when there was a board meeting going on, where I knew that I could get a cheque written out and signed by the finance and one other director, to pay me my three month overdue invoices.
And if you worked there, you'll know why this ------>>>
Re refusal to pay invoices, I learned early on in my contracting/consultancy career that refusal to pay invoices for failure to provide "the goods" sometimes has nothing to do with whether you executed the service properly, on time, etc., and everything to do with the client's often miseducated view of what he thought you did. One such client refused to pay for what to me was a spurious reason. Fortunately I had kept an email proving the opposite to their view. Still took about 4 months to get paid.
Just to put the opposite viewpoint from all the above I did have one customer who would always request an invoice for planned work in advance, and would hand me a cheque for the full amount when I arrived.
They were an insurance agent and most of their transactions were in-and-out anyway so her view was that it was cheaper to pay immediately than employ someone to manage the accounts payable. It was a refreshing attitude if a little embarrassing when I arrived to do some work and discovered that their machine wouldn't read either copy of the relevant floppy disks that I had with me! In those pre-internet and laptop days there wasn't much I could do except return to the office and revisit the next day with disks written on a different machine plus, as an emergency measure, a desktop with the files on it in the boot just in case.
.. but isn't there a fun thing in UK law where you can stop a business via the small claims court from operating if they owe you more than GBP 750 or so?
I haven't had occasion to use it although I once came close with highly suspicious banking crooks but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called again. In my experience especially the big boys intensely dislike you when you start musing aloud about the mere possibility - usually they think you'll fold because you need the money and further business, but I go from the principle that (a) I consider that money lost already and (b) not having customers that pay that late allows me to focus on those that do not force me to waste time and resources on payment recovery.
this one https://www.gov.uk/wind-up-a-company-that-owes-you-money
HMRC use that when corporation tax bills go unpaid. Usually works very well, since the winding-up order is public and all the other suppliers to that company are likely to see it and react badly: "They're going under? Shit! Sue them for all our outstanding invoices NOW!". Instant cash-flow problems.
There's a reason why HMRC prefer this. When a company is wound up the available cash has to be distributed between all the creditors according to the debts so that if there isn't enough you only get your pro rata x pence in the pound. But some creditors are more even than others and HMRC is more even than most (I can't remember off-hand where they stand in relation to payroll).
If they HMRC initiate wind-up they'll get their full due or as much of it as there's money to support. Only then do you and the others get a share-out. If a trade creditor initiates wind-up they either need to be sure there really is enough money there or else they've effectively written off the debt and are being vindictive (or public spirited depending on your PoV).
The Australian Taxation Office used to operate this way as well.
However, after a number of high-profile windups where the employees and small businesses got nothing, the law was changed.
Now, directors of a company can be held personally liable for PAYE, GST and employee Superannuation debts.
Gets the attention of "silent" directors real fast.
People have used this to force companies (usually large corporates) to finally pay their invoices.
I can't find any recent cases in the press, but I distinctly recall someone trying to get an insolvency petition or winding up order against one of the retail banks (was it HSBC) over compensation.
But HMRC loves issuing winding up petitions against footie clubs and other entities!
Banks (remember the big fees scandal about a decade or so ago) were subject to debt collection with bailiffs going in to recover goods equal to the compensation they were owed:
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-1606366/Bank-charge-victim-sends-bailiffs.html
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/how-one-man-beat-the-bank-1023667
The most recent (and more 'entertaining') incident was a guy sending the bailiffs to Wizzair at Luton Airport to pay compensation:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-64999557
Something like that happened in the US. After the 2008 crash Bank of America tried to foreclose on a house that was owned free and clear and had never had a mortgage with B of A. The justifiably angry homeowners sued for their costs, and got ignored by the bank. So one day they showed up at the nearest ranch with an armed Sheriff's Deputy and a truck and started seizing furniture and computers. This resulted in the manager immediately paying the judgement.
24x7 support for point-of-sale in restaurants in the mid 1990's.... $500 annual support contract seems cheap by today's standards. Still took their call without a contract, $50 minimum for the first 30 minutes, credit card number first.
3am pager alert, and called them back. "Non System Disk Error", and shrieks of panic from the poor sod who was stuck closing the restaurant. Scrounging up their personal credit card because they didn't dare call the boss that time of night. Yeah, you old timers know where this is going....
"Push the button next to the floppy disk. Now press the space bar. We've got 29 minutes and 50 seconds left, is there anything else I can help you with?"
To set the stage, large company known by a TLA having won a very large public sector contract to replace back office systems for local government and police forces across a couple of counties with a SAP system. Nobody will be overly shocked to hear there were one or two teething problems.
Agreed payment schedule was partially on a milestone reached basis. Said TLA were asking for the half mil for getting the POP system online, customer was refusing to pay as simply put it didn't work.
Things got nasty and words were bandied so finally customer agreed to pay. A week or so later the PE asked were the payment was as it hadn't been received, and yup suspect you have already worked out, answer was it was entered into SAP, if you want it we suggest you get it working.
Many moons ago I worked at a small networking company that had just bought a small ISP. We had just moved from storing customer data on 3x5" index cards to a primative authentication/authorization/accounting package. The package, much like the index cards, stored passwords in plain text, but at least the credentials were linked to the RADIUS server.
The software did not have a simple enabled/disabled checkbox, so when an account was past due, we manually changed the password.
One afternoon, I overheard our level1 tech/tape monkey/janitor take a call for a user with a login failure issue. Good news is, he was able to get the customer online again. Bad news is, he did so by telling the customer their password. Worse news is, he didn't catch on to the fact that the password was "DISABLED_NONPAYMENT".
Who wanted a license from a vendor NOW! So gained a temporary license by quoting a genuine internal purchase order number with payment to follow. 2 months later vendor calls me asking about payment, i check the system and the PM cancelled the order as soon as we received the temporary license. Escalated to manager and never heard anything further, however cowboy PM disappeared shortly after (turns out he quoted really low costs for the project without checking with anyone, and was pulling similar stunts with hardware vendors and network providers to stay under budget).
"Service as a Subscription"?
You do the service as a subscription that's good for 30 days with any unpaid past invoices causing the service to be undone until the account is back in good standing. Any account with a zero balance after 180 will receive an unlimited password until the next order. Everything all nice and tidy right up front with a customer signature. That way when the system goes Tango Uniform for an unpaid invoice, there's no issue with computer tampering laws. It's the same as any other service that's purchased in lumps of time.
Maybe Douglas Adams knew of this publisher, for he created the character Michael Wenton-Weeks, fondly nicknamed Michael Wednesday-Week, who always promised publication of his rather esoteric quarterly a week on Wednesday, but never followed through, preferring to continue using the money for lavish lunches etc.
Fittingly when the BBC did a radio serialisation of "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency", he was played by Michael Fenton-Stevens.
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