Reply to: Fighting Back Against Late Payment Culture

[eek]

By taking bribes from the agencies to only publish good reviews?

Too obvious. You have a separate company that offers to clean bad reviews and advertise it to companies once the bad reviews have appeared....

[missinggreenfields]

I don't see the business case.

How does a B2B Agency-Review site make any money?

By taking bribes from the agencies to only publish good reviews?

[tomtomagain]

I don't see the business case.

How does a B2B Agency-Review site make any money?

[northernladuk]

Erm. Thanks for that.

[itschrisnow]

Confidential info and non-disclosure agreements

Hi everyone,

I've been checking up on where such a B2B review website would stand with the law. I've categorised all the information in this spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...ZCbQmU/pubhtml

Basically, the conclusion of my research is:

1. It is illegal for the subcontractor to send confidential information whether he has signed a confidentiality agreement or not.

2. It would be illegal for a B2B review website to disclose any information to the public if the information were suspected to be confidential.

3. The court can order the B2B review website to remove any review which the main contractor declares confidential.

4. The B2B review website is not allowed to publish posts which the B2B review website considers not true.

However:

5. Before any court orders the B2B review website to remove a review, they have to take into consideration the B2B review website's right to freedom of speech.

6. The B2B review website can re-post a review containing confidential information if it is proved in court to be in the public interest.

7. Confidentiality is a public right, and in the end, the court will have to judge whether the right of confidentiality is more important than the right of public interest. This will need to be judged on a case by case basis.

8. The B2B review website can publish confidential information as evidence that the main contractor has broken the law.

From a legal standpoint, continuing with a B2B review website is gonna be really tough. However, No.6 above does offer a way forward. It would definitely be in the public interest for the public to know which companies are late payers, and which companies are abusing their position by demanding extortionate trade credit from their suppliers.

The B2B review website would need to crowd-fund a bunch of legal cases to set a precedent. Only then would the main contractors think twice about getting take-down notices issued by the courts.

I hope this will be food for thought for you. Let me know what you think.

[MrMarkyMark]

Past performance is no indication for the future - everything was fine and dandy with my agency until the money ran out.
And they did take a few poor souls on board in the last few months to keep the boat afloat but it didn't help.
Guess who lost the money (hint: not the agency directors - it is Ltd after all)

How much did you lose?

[yasockie]

Past performance is no indication for the future - everything was fine and dandy with my agency until the money ran out.
And they did take a few poor souls on board in the last few months to keep the boat afloat but it didn't help.
Guess who lost the money (hint: not the agency directors - it is Ltd after all)

[itschrisnow]

A big thanks for your help

Hi again everyone.

I'd just like to thank everyone who contributed to this thread. You've all been very helpful.

My apologies for not being able to get back to you all earlier. I've been posting on a few forums, not only in the IT contractor field, but I'm also interested in late payment across the whole economy. My research so far suggests that the worst offenders are supermarket chains and main contractors in the construction industry. There seems to be something funny going on with the investors in the construction industry too, but I haven't got to the bottom of it yet.

From your responses, it seems that there is no real need for a review site for agents in the IT contractor field, however, because the website will be very general, they'll be no reason why someone from your field won't be able to leave a review.

Once again, thanks for your input.

Chris

[SueEllen]

Host the site in Japan

Doesn't work as your main audience is in the UK. If the audience was international then you could get away with it.

[silverlight1]

So maybe not a goer, and I guess there is also likely to be any number of legal implications with any such review site.

Host the site in Japan

[DallasDad]

Possibly, and I could equally be doing the OP a disservice

I have a bit of a downer on Ambulance Chasers at the moment especially of the Bob variety foul mouthed little barstewards who don't like being told no thankyou
Swmbo was being plagued to death with them here, constantly calling about a no fault no injury accident my son had 2 years ago on his Motorbike.

Often 10-15 calls a day

So I bought a Truecall device, which gives full control over who gets through, peace has returned.

[LondonManc]

FTFY

Another OP that has disappeared of the face of the planet
I wonder if he is really developing a new angle on Ambulance Chasing, tailored to miffed contractors!

Eeek!

He could belong to an agency, looking to collect names and tactics of other agencies, names of good agents worth recruiting, etc. Free market research and recruitment.

[DallasDad]

I belong to a group of specialist Ambulance Chasers

FTFY

Another OP that has disappeared of the face of the planet
I wonder if he is really developing a new angle on Ambulance Chasing, tailored to miffed contractors!

Eeek!

[LondonManc]

I always ask the second question first and get email confirmation. I can influence the first question later.

Working practices will vary from role to role - it shouldn't be difficult to have a generic IR35-friendly base contract template and a distinct one for IR35 should it?

[northernladuk]

There are two key things for me for an agency:
Is the agency's standard contract template IR35-friendly and matches the working practices?
Are they on a percentage commission or do they operate on fixed budget?

I always ask the second question first and get email confirmation. I can influence the first question later.