Reply to: Elan invoice payment

[Ghengis]

You may be right, hitting their bank balance might be the only thing they understand, but after conversations with them and meeting their "that's the way we do things" mentality makes me think they may not even notice.

[NoddY]

Just turn up at head office with a gun:

"Business bad? Fu*k you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fu*k you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning huh? Fu*k you, pay me." "

Works every time!

[s2budd]

Payment Terms

There is stacks of contracts about at the moment. Just serve them notice and accept another contract. They will soon get the message.

[Ghengis]

I have been "got" by Elan's 3 week delay also. Yes, I know I should have read the contract more carefully but nearly all agencies have payment schedules but they usually treat them as guidlines. In practice, whenever you send an invoice in, it is paid in a few days. Elan treat these schedules as cast in stone and won't budge. "It is the way we do things" they say in their mindless way. Rather reminiscent of the much discredited excuse "we are following orders". Perhaps we should all try to renegotiate the terms.

[Mailman]

only Muppet agencies will agree to a contract without a non-solicitation clause in it. It doesn't matter whether the new agent is on a PSL or not.

Only a muppet agent would think non-solicitation clauses are enforceable...or worth the effort to enforce

Seriously, you need to read the regs because you are showing the wisdom of youth with every post you make.

Mailman

[Cowboy Bob]

only Muppet agencies will agree to a contract without a non-solicitation clause in it. It doesn't matter whether the new agent is on a PSL or not.

No, only scammer agencies need to do this to lock in the end client. Decent agencies will get the repeat business anyway. If you play hardball all the time, it will backfire - whether you are on the contractor or agency side of the fence. I've seen it many times.

[IT contract agent]

only Muppet agencies will agree to a contract without a non-solicitation clause in it. It doesn't matter whether the new agent is on a PSL or not.

[Mailman]

You most likely won’t be able to change agencies - the client will be legally obliged to only hire your services through the original agency

Not necessarily.

The client may have a preferred list of agents they will work with so the contractor could still have the choice of moving at the end of the contract, albeit reletively restricted list of choices.

Best thing to do is to talk to the client to find out of any such restriction applies and if not then its open season.

Mailman

[Churchill]

Renegotiate your terms...

[Snowman]

Elan seem to have lost sight of their raison d’être. An agency exists to match contractors with contracts and to pay the contractors’ invoices promptly so that they are not subject to the vagaries of large companies’ accounting timetables. The contractor is a creator of income for Elan and as such enriches Elan. Without the contractor Elan's income would be drastically reduced. He is not here merely to be manipulated to optimise Elan’s cash flow.
I realise that I made the fundamental mistake of assuming Elan would behave in a decent and honourable manner and look after their source of wealth i.e. the contractors - as do all other agencies I have dealt with over the last 30 years. Elan need to re-examine their position and adopt a more flexible payment system. If they can't pay with one week, they should go out of business instead of relying on the contractors to bolster their cash flow.

[IT contract agent]

You most likely won’t be able to change agencies - the client will be legally obliged to only hire your services through the original agency

[boredsenseless]

"It is our right to change agents if we wish" - possibly, but there's no corresponding obligation for the end client to use your agency of choice.

And of course bear in mind that you can change agent but if your agent is smart they have a similar agreement with the client (i.e you won't employ thunderlizard for a period of x after the termination of the contract)

Guess what - that one is enforceable, you will notice over the coming months that these hidden handcuffs become more common as agents seek to protect their margins since otherwise they don't really have a business if every contractor jumped ship after 3 months.

Remember when you are getting annoyed at the agents practice that they are only treating you in this way because you agreed to their conditions. I have no symapthy in these situations however I am full of empathy for contractors who are being stiffed by agents, clients etc when this is outside of the signed agreement.

[thunderlizard]

"It is our right to change agents if we wish" - possibly, but there's no corresponding obligation for the end client to use your agency of choice.

[Mailman]

Is this really true?

Yes it is true.

The only way around this is if there are clauses in your contract that allows the current agents to be managed out of the relationship (most likely through a short term extension after which you can change without penalty to anyone else).

If your contract contains no such clause then you can change at your next renewal.

Mailman

[privateeye]

Trouble is you are all seen as individuals - may I suggest to send some private messages to each other and swap contact details and then operate as more of a group to see if you can change things. If you all complained at the same time to the same person it is likely to be taken more seriously.

When IR35 kicked off Elan were openly boasting that it didn't effect them so they wouldn't change their contract - they soon changed that when they were running out of contractors.