Slippery agent behaviour.

[psychocandy]

Went to one gig through an agent I KNEW was a massive crook. Worked with him before and we'd had a few run-ins.
First day, another contractor there, first timer....

We were talking and he said something along the lines of decent gig but pity the client had to change to budget and drop the rate by £50 the day before we started. (The agent hadn't tried it with me!). I was unsure whether to tell him but I did in the end. How to get a new contractor onside at their first client NOT.

Total scumbag, penny pinching behaviour.

[psychocandy]

My worst one was when I was negotiating my second contract. The daily rate agreed was something like £350, it was only after interview that it transpired this daily rate was only acheivable doing a 12 hour night shift, so instead of the roughly £50/hour it was only £30/hour. The negotiations got so bad between the agency, the client and the 3 contractors that the agency then told me "they had washed their hands of the whole deal" and hadnt even bothered to tell the contractors that it had all fallen through. I then even tried calling HR direct to see if something could be done, but they weren't impressed with the agency or us contractors (who the agency had obviously blamed for being awkward and making the deal fall through)

I remember when I started and was a bit dull asking the agent what hours they worked in the team.

Of course, he said they start 8am and work hard and late tilll 6pm earliest. Of course they did no such thing I found out.

But then I realised. Agent suppliers contractor who works 9-10 hour days, client is well pleased with agent for having found such a good contractor. Agent still gets paid the same, as does contractor. Only one losing here is contractor who thinks he has to work long hours....

[psychocandy]

14 months of not paying an invoice and lying about me to clients... but they backed down 2 weeks before the date of the court case when they took advice from an external solicitor who told them they had no chance.

I did a one day gig once. It was supposed to be easy. Swap a disk in copy some data etc.
Got there, contact was off sick, no-one else knew anything about it, worse still the disk was locked in a cupboard and he had the keys. So I sat there. They eventually sorted it by about 2pm.

I'd travelled about 3 hours to get here so wasnt keen on working too late. Still no-one knew what they wanted copying. Come 5pm they said "sorry the office is closing we're all going home". Suits me - I'm off.

So I stuck my invoice in thinking, complete disaster but not my problem. Agent came on the phone ranting saying his client were disgusted I hadn't finished the task and they'd refused to pay.

Tough luck. Small claims court it went. Of course agency didnt show, default judgement. I was hoping they didnt pay so I could have a laugh sending bailiffs in but they coughed up.

[northernladuk]

I did a one day gig once. It was supposed to be easy. Swap a disk in copy some data etc.
Got there, contact was off sick, no-one else knew anything about it, worse still the disk was locked in a cupboard and he had the keys. So I sat there. They eventually sorted it by about 2pm.

I'd travelled about 3 hours to get here so wasnt keen on working too late. Still no-one knew what they wanted copying. Come 5pm they said "sorry the office is closing we're all going home". Suits me - I'm off.

So I stuck my invoice in thinking, complete disaster but not my problem. Agent came on the phone ranting saying his client were disgusted I hadn't finished the task and they'd refused to pay.

Tough luck. Small claims court it went. Of course agency didnt show, default judgement. I was hoping they didnt pay so I could have a laugh sending bailiffs in but they coughed up.

So not really slippery behaviour by the agent then? Cool story though.

[Eirikur]

In the last few days I have pulled out of two time consuming applications after receiving offers - one because the the rate magically dropped by 10% and one because the contract magically flipped from outside to inside.

This is pretty par for the course but what is the worst behaviour you have experienced from an agent? For me it was an agent arranging an interview before even approaching me for the role and then getting *extremely* belligerent when told I wasn't interested.

By far not the worst.
In my first year as contractor, so still quite inexperienced I told an agency Y I was interviewing with a certain company ( I gave them the name, yes you should never do that, but I was inexperienced) through agency X. Few days later Agency Y called me pretending they were agency X and asked how did the interview go, not realizing it was agency Y I told them it went well and there will be a second round with two managers. When they started asking for the names of the managers (and a few other things they said) it started to dawn on me that something was not quite right, so I said one of the managers was Mike Hunt.
Later I spoke with agency X and they confirmed it wasn't them who called
Didn't get the contract in the end though

Got other examples of agencies putting me under pressure and one threatening with court action, because I told the end client they had changed my CV and they (the agency) lied.

[virtualm]

On the basis this is happening a lot now. I am going to stipulate in my representation email that the rate that was agreed £xxx is the rate I am prepared to take and it is not for negotiation if I am succesful in winning the contract. I am getting sick of this, it's all the new kids on the block being greedy.

[eek]

On the basis this is happening a lot now. I am going to stipulate in my representation email that the rate that was agreed £xxx is the rate I am prepared to take and it is not for negotiation if I am succesful in winning the contract. I am getting sick of this, it's all the new kids on the block being greedy.

Risk of that is that they skip your representation and continue talking to the next option.

Remember that you never 100% know if your CV is one of the 3 they are allowed to submit.

[pr1]

14 months of not paying an invoice and lying about me to clients... but they backed down 2 weeks before the date of the court case when they took advice from an external solicitor who told them they had no chance.

Did they cover your costs / pay any interest or did you ultimately just have to take a 14 month wait & initiating legal proceedings on the chin?

[ResistanceFighter]

Nothing crazy but a few had a few have had policies that have made me think hmmm better to avoid these in the future.

One agency had a 6 week payment policy, but if you wanted the money quicker they took incremental bites of out the invoice total (10%, 20%) depending on how fast you wanted it.

Another had a policy with the end client that anybody who I personally recommended would have a chunk of their day rate paid to the agency I was with, even if that recommendation was a direct contract.

Not sure if these are common practice

[virtualm]

Just had the gig I was chasing come through as an offer, contracts receveived today. This is one where the agency asked for me to reduce my rate as per the client request and I refused to lower my rate....so much bs going on, stand your ground people.