Screening process

[JustKeepSwimming]

He wasn't lazy, he was stating an opinion, one that I share.

Please remember that this is a Professional forum.

No it is not an opinion. He is stating that it is illegal to give a negative reference, he is asserting a fact.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/bad-work-r...071722507.html

Although it is commonly assumed that an employer must give a reference and writing a “bad” one is illegal, this is not technically the case. In fact, your employer can give you a bad or unfavourable reference if they deem it to be accurate and have reasonable grounds for that belief. However, it is illegal to give an inaccurate reference.

[eek]

No it is not an opinion. He is stating that it is illegal to give a negative reference, he is asserting a fact.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/bad-work-r...071722507.html

Yes you can say there are crap but you better have a lot of money to back up your evidence when it comes to caught.

Which is why everyone (except for Schools where reference wording will be agreed as part of any redundancy package) keeps things as simple as possible and only provides statements that are factually correct without anything subjective.

[gixxer2021]

As an update to anyone interested - I had a call with them yesterday.

The are arguing the toss about research into some new technologies being on the invoice when they had not asked for it. I pointed them towards the conversation where they said they were happy to pay for me to do research but offered to remove those hours from the invoice as it was only 4 hours.

They complained that something I had written was not what they had asked for, I pointed out that it matched exactly the specs I had been sent but they insist those were marketing documents and were not intended to be used as a spec. They both claimed that the spec was verbally described (I do not recollect that but it is possible) and any communication issues were my fault. I offered to halve the charge for those hours as the work was done in good faith and most of it still applies imho. If they do not want to pay anything for it then I guess I will write off the hours and not give them access to the repo.

I also pointed out that when we changed from 40 hours a week to hour by hour billing we did not discuss it until later June and no contract was signed until July so for them to apply the new contract from the 1st of June was unexpected hence some of the confusion over the hours as I was not keeping detailed records in June overall this caused a difference of about £1500 which I wrote off.

Apparently, they have a lost their main client (pretty much their only regular source of revenue) which might be why they are panicking a little.

Overall the conversation was friendly and they want to keep me on for when they have work they need done.

I’m with The Dude on this, they sound an absolute nightmare to deal with. Did you provide them the results of the research, quick doc or prototype, etc? Even without, the fact they’re haggling over a few hours is dreadful, worse they’ve cost you 1500 due to them applying contract terms that weren’t even in force till the following month. I’d still try and avoid burning bridges (sounds like you’re definitely doing that, but at your own cost), but avoid them in the future unless no other options

[MyUserName]

Yeah, I am trying to avoid burning bridges and they are a nice bunch of guys but I am wary of any further business dealings with them. I am focussing on getting as much of my money as I can and then either terminating the contract or getting half the money up front for project work.