Agencies to avoid....

[clearedforlanding]

My tuliplist

Vine Resourcing & Intuition IT.

For every possible reason. Lies from beginning to end.

[strawberrysmoothie]

Ok, thanks

It was gregory james. Without going into detail. Very unpleasant experience. Utter tulip.

[clearedforlanding]

Ok, thanks

It was gregory james. Without going into detail. Very unpleasant experience. Utter tulip.

Oh dear. Did this not give you a clue?

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Gregory James Group - Home

[djm]

First post after joining on here, I've been contracting for around 8 years so thought I'd add my experiences.

- I've found Modis excellent. Their portal works well, they always pay me 10 working days after month end including expenses incurred in that month. They are not great at proactively chasing extensions, they phone me up and ask me to chase the manager, which does make me think "what are Modis doing then?", but to be fair, I'm in a better position to know what's going on with the workload, and the manager normally tells me their extension plans, so it works reasonably well. I don't have any social contact with them, there's no lunches, drinks or Christmas parties, but they have always paid me on time, and I've been working through them for 3.5 years on and off now.

- Sanderson Recruitment - generally seemed OK, but refused to pay my last month, due to "the client saying there was no handover done", and only backed down after repeated emails proving a handover was done, and the client had signed my timesheets and had no idea what they were on about. Small claims court threat worked too. Paid 1 day later. The attitude of the agent was a bit poor, saying "we'll pay you now, but be aware, it could put a black mark against your name".

- Vector Resourcing - the very worst I've ever dealt with. The biggest areas of concern were:
a) they only pay expenses when they get paid from the client, which could be (and always is) 90 days time.
b) they don't pay the last month until the client pays them, so 90 days time again.
c) impossible to phone them. All enquiries, even a 2 second question, must be emailed in, and their turnaround is 48 hours.
d) One payment run a month (on, say, the 15th for the month before), so if your timesheet isn't signed by x date, you have to wait the 15th of the following month, so a 6 week wait.
e) Online portal doesn't particularly work, and often, doesn't send out notifications to the client to sign things, so often, the client has to be reminded by me personally, which is a little awkward.
All of these are in their contract, so it's absolutely my fault for not reading it properly, but I'd assumed all agencies were the same, so I didn't read it in detail. Lesson learned.

I will have to add in a comment about Lorien as well, as I'm currently going through them for my soon-to-be new role, starting in a few weeks.
- Their payment terms are 10 working days, which seems fine.
- We agreed a rate, and then they phoned me up a few hours later, and said "we managed to secure you £50 more a day". Surprisingly nice of them. I assume they get paid a % of my rate.
- They have no paid-when-paid policies in regards to the last month or expenses.
- Their online portal (so far) seems reasonably good.
- They respond super quickly to emails, and phone calls, so communication seems decent so far.

[northernladuk]

How did you get on with opt in/out at Lorien??

[djm]

How did you get on with opt in/out at Lorien??

They've sent through the opt-out documents into the portal for me to sign. There's been no calls or pressure about it. To be honest, I'm actually a little confused about opt-out, I was going to start a new thread about it on here. I've always opted out, not sure I ever fully understood it, but for my first role, I asked contractor friends of mine and they all opted out so I just followed them. Reading this thread, it seems like everyone opts-in.

Should I be opting-in?

I also read that the agency should ask you to opt in or out before introduction to the client. I've been introduced, interviewed, got the role, and now I've received the opt-out forms along with the contract to sign. I did read that this made the opt-out worthless, is this true?

[northernladuk]

They've sent through the opt-out documents into the portal for me to sign. There's been no calls or pressure about it. To be honest, I'm actually a little confused about opt-out, I was going to start a new thread about it on here. I've always opted out, not sure I ever fully understood it, but for my first role, I asked contractor friends of mine and they all opted out so I just followed them. Reading this thread, it seems like everyone opts-in.

Should I be opting-in?

I also read that the agency should ask you to opt in or out before introduction to the client. I've been introduced, interviewed, got the role, and now I've received the opt-out forms along with the contract to sign. I did read that this made the opt-out worthless, is this true?

We'd have ripped you a new one if you had. There is a 500 post sticky on it about 5 lines up from this thread...

This one.
http://forums.contractoruk.com/busin...-2003-act.html

[djm]

That's fair. I will read that 50-page thread, and try and digest everything. I was reading a thread about "bandit agency" and opting-in sounded important to get in that situation, but the majority of people I know opt-out, so hopefully reading that thread will give me pros and cons to both and help me decide :-)

[NibblyPig]

They're asking if you Opt-In to the job offer going into the bin. Don't call us, we'll call you.

[SurreyPM]

Vector Resourcing Limited.


1. Take 25% off the top
2. Late payments
3. No direct email communication with their staff, only group email addresses (replies never have a name on them)
4. Direct phone conversations are recorded (whether you like it or not) and they will claim you/they said things in them which you don't believe was said, but the recordings sometimes "go missing" when you ask to hear them, or when they are supposed to be presented to court.
5. Misrepresent you to the clientco and misrepresent the clientco to you.
6. Will claim clientco are not paying them and thus they don't need to pay you
7. Will accuse you of a variety of things, mostly false or unproven
8. Final payment will be at least a month later than all other payments, can be more than a year. Clientco will be blamed, you will be blamed, and they'll claim it's within the contract
9. When asked a simple question, will reply with reams of pages of response unrelated to the question but will make new accusations in said pages
10. Accuse you of "bribery" when you ask them to cut their %.


...want me to go on?

I've just been offered a contract through this agency. Your response is useful. Did you try and get the contract amended so they had the final payment clause removed? I really want to work for the company the role is with but less so through this agency :-(