Slippery agent behaviour.

[TheDude]

Applied for a gig, agent said they'd submitted CV, they'd actually binned it.
Fortunately I also went straight to the client chasing it up, they obviously had no knowledge of the CV, sent it and got the gig.
Then comes the 'congrats' call from the agent. Who proceeded to get whatever sign-on bonus and skimming of day rate for doing nothing - no, less than nothing, as they actively conspired against me getting the gig.

Of course the client couldn't just directly offer me the contract as they are locked in to some exclusivity deal with the agency.

Why do companies enter into such deals with these ****s ?
They appear to offer zero value whatsoever other than skimming money from both client and supplier and clicking 'print to pdf' every now and again.

That is appalling.

[Paracelsus]

Applied for a gig, agent said they'd submitted CV, they'd actually binned it.
Fortunately I also went straight to the client chasing it up, they obviously had no knowledge of the CV, sent it and got the gig.
Then comes the 'congrats' call from the agent. Who proceeded to get whatever sign-on bonus and skimming of day rate for doing nothing - no, less than nothing, as they actively conspired against me getting the gig.

Of course the client couldn't just directly offer me the contract as they are locked in to some exclusivity deal with the agency.

Why do companies enter into such deals with these ****s ?
They appear to offer zero value whatsoever other than skimming money from both client and supplier and clicking 'print to pdf' every now and again.

[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.

[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

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.