Whats going on at Albany?

[Fred Bloggs]

Wow, I can see how those are some very, very pi55ed off guys.

[pzz76077]

Wow, I can see how those are some very, very pi55ed off guys.

several hundred, or possibly several thousand at a guess.

PZZ

[Fred Bloggs]

several hundred, or possibly several thousand at a guess.

PZZ

Wow, much sympathy is due. O&G travelling all round the world is not an easy business to be in.

[pzz76077]

Wow, much sympathy is due. O&G travelling all round the world is not an easy business to be in.

My record in my younger days was 31 countries in 12 months, only 5 last year though.

Also, owing money to oil workers is generally not good for your health.
One of my team left school at 15 to become a bare knuckle prize fighter before getting in on the 70s oil wave in South America then spending 15 years working up to platform manager, (followed by 5 years at MIT to gain a MSc in organizational psychology, which is what he does now, man management).
He is the size of a whale and God help anyone that he catches who has anything to do with this.

PZZ

[PAH]

If they are not able to stay in business, then I would have a great concern of any other agents/umbrella/service company and would be making sure that all possible funds were in my account, not accepting any excuses for late payments and stopping work or taking legal action immediately.

Good advice.

I now realise how important it is to make sure you get the contract terms screwed down as best you can. Things like demanding weekly invoicing and payment within 7 days of invoice submission otherwise it's down tools immediately until payment is received.

This is something many of the larger and more professional agencies can cater for (with weekly BACS runs etc), even if they don't like to admit it because they prefer to get payment terms strung out to a month or more for cash flow reasons.

Obviously this may be more difficult to achieve in the current economic climate where the chance of any work means people will be willing to open themselves to more risk in the hope it never happens to them. But if the agency isn't willing to come close to those kind of terms or is unable to stick to them you've got to worry about why that is. Complacency can be costly.

[Umbrellaphobic]

Good advice.

I now realise how important it is to make sure you get the contract terms screwed down as best you can. Things like demanding weekly invoicing and payment within 7 days of invoice submission otherwise it's down tools immediately until payment is received.

This is something many of the larger and more professional agencies can cater for (with weekly BACS runs etc), even if they don't like to admit it because they prefer to get payment terms strung out to a month or more for cash flow reasons.

Obviously this may be more difficult to achieve in the current economic climate where the chance of any work means people will be willing to open themselves to more risk in the hope it never happens to them. But if the agency isn't willing to come close to those kind of terms or is unable to stick to them you've got to worry about why that is. Complacency can be costly.

I'm sure the directors / shareholders of this company are exposed: My invoice went in on 5th January, money arrived in their account circa 8th January (almost 20K for Nov / Dec), they knew there was a problem in December.

I'm taking it further.

Pity I don't live in London...

[candyflipper]

Albany were one of the biggest, longest running and best managed companies offering this kind of service.

I agree; Albany seemed to be on the ball and more competent than the others. But I have to say they were still unprofessional overall.

Albany used spreadsheets for all their accounting, not a proper accounting package that ensures money within the system isn't created or destroyed. Their spreadsheets actually had data entry errors occasionally. And their were also accounting errors in the calculations.

At least they had enough sense to encrypt the spreadsheets.

I'm blown away by the 550k loss across six contractors. Why would so many contractors trust mirasol to that extent?