Monday Links from Nowhere Vol. LXIII

[OwlHoot]

I was taken on by a company in the group that included Inginia, for a month contract at a telcoms company in Slough in August 2010 to write some perl code for an Oracle data feed.

My proposed contribution was a fairly small part of the overall project, to be completed at the start, and it was anticipated the project as a whole would take several months including testing and user acceptance.

Before starting, I noticed my contract said I would be paid "following user acceptance". Not having anything else on the go at the time, and wanting a bit of Oracle experience even if only peripherally, I was quite keen to do the work but naturally very unhappy about this ridiculous condition.

So, despite them being very emphatic (suspiciously so) that I should FAX the signed contract back before starting, I deliberately "forgot", and was was two or three days in before I contacted the agency and said the payment condition was absurd and if not changed before I signed the contract then I would walk off the site.

By then I had a few preliminary results to show the end users, and not wanting to upset the users Inginia very reluctantly agreed to a 30 day term (which was bad enough itself, but at least not almost open-ended).

In the event, the contract was extended slightly to about six weeks and I then started at another clientco and carelessly let things slip regarding checking payment of my Inginia invoice for several thousand pounds. (In theory I could have applied for a winding up petition back in about october 2010, and certainly would have if I'd realized the rogues hadn't paid!)

But as I mentioned in an earlier post, as luck would have it, several months later, at the end of 2010, there was a requirement for a day's extra work at Inginia's clientco. To the MD's obvious irritation when I spoke to him on the phone, there was no one else they could readily lay their hands on who could do this.

Noticing then that my earlier invoice _still_ hadn't been paid, after six months, I said I would be willing to do this work but only once this was rectified.

According to the MD, it was all a lamentable oversight that had slipped through the net, and would have been sorted out in no time had I mentioned it earlier!

I bet they never paid the invoice for the day's work. Couldn't be bothered to check afterwards, as it was only a few hundred. If not then there was certainly no point once I received the administrator's
letter.

For what it's worth (nothing I know) you have my sympathies muhnkee_2. But again one has to ask how and why you let it get so much! Once an agency starts getting behind with payments, they'll never catch up.

[muhnkee_2]

Just in case anyone else has ended up here while trying to track down their money from Inginia Solutions...
I thought i would post this interesting little blog that I stumbled across. It appears that these guys really pissed some people off:
mockingtudor.wordpress.com
It looks like their companies owe contractors and suppliers at least £700,000.
My share of that is a relatively small £20,000.
I hope we get some justice, but I aint holding my breath, the cheeky git Michael Baker who runs Inginia solutions has even listed one of his other companies as a creditor to Inginia Solutions.
They are still operating as Empire RC and Execuit, stay well clear of them.
Cheers,
Greg

[OwlHoot]

I remember one place going bust on me with 30000 quid outstanding. ah me. unhappy days...

Holy carp! How/why in the World did you let it creep up to that amount?!

(Unless you're HMR&C )

[DS23]

I remember one place going bust on me with 300 quid outstanding. It took a couple of years to get paid out and I only got something like 25 quid.

By that time of course I had swapped from self employed to LtdCo and the bank wouldn't let me pay the cheque in, even when countersigned.

I remember one place going bust on me with 30000 quid outstanding. ah me. unhappy days...

[Sysman]

Now I think of it, they only paid me for a month's work about three months later, when they needed some more work doing a month or so ago. So I was very lucky!

I remember one place going bust on me with 300 quid outstanding. It took a couple of years to get paid out and I only got something like 25 quid.

By that time of course I had swapped from self employed to LtdCo and the bank wouldn't let me pay the cheque in, even when countersigned.

[OwlHoot]

what agency was it ?

Well, assuming the receipt of administration papers means they really are in administration, so this isn't libellous - Inginia Solutions

edit: and I see their home page has gone AWOL:

Firefox can't find the server at inginiasolutions.com

edit: There's a review page on them here

Now I think of it, they only paid me for a month's work about three months later, when they needed some more work doing a month or so ago. So I was very lucky!

[DS23]

cyclogyro!

A cyclogyro (or cyclogyre) is an aeroplane propelled and given lift by horizontal assemblies of rotating wings. Very few prototypes were built, and those that were constructed were completely unsuccessful.

wonderfully mad.

[zeitghost]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Gearwheels From Hell.

[FiveTimes]

What's yours gone and done now?

(I've just lost £300 for a day's work I did a couple of months ago for a previous client, on account of the agency going belly up - Received a wodge of papers from the administrators last week. )

what agency was it ?

[d000hg]

You've managed to lose 2 contracts in as many weeks?! You're giving MF a run for his money.

Seriously though, that sucks. Care to indulge in a proper rant?

[NickFitz]

What's yours gone and done now?

(I've just lost £300 for a day's work I did a couple of months ago for a previous client, on account of the agency going belly up - Received a wodge of papers from the administrators last week. )

Two agencies, ruining my life independently of each other. Suffice it to say that I currently have no source of revenue, which isn't what one needs when one has been unable to work for a while due to sudden illness, and has then spent one's remaining cash on agency-inspired pursuits of feral anserines

[OwlHoot]

Bloody agencies Anyway...

What's yours gone and done now?

(I've just lost £300 for a day's work I did a couple of months ago for a previous client, on account of the agency going belly up - Received a wodge of papers from the administrators last week. )

[NickFitz]

Bloody agencies Anyway...

• ICorrect: Setting the record straight - A site that allows people (mainly celebrities) to correct the garbage written about them by the Press. "Accusation: Jemima Goldsmith changed her first name to the Muslim name Haiqa when she got married. Correction by Jemima Khan: I never changed my first name and if I had, it would not have been for a name, which when said out loud, sounds like you're clearing your throat of phlegm."
  
  
• The strange unearthly music that appears when you import Windows program files as audio data - Ben Goldacre discovers the modern equivalent of listening to ZX Spectrum cassettes: "I really like this: the raw data from the program file for Microsoft paint.exe imported as a PCM audio file, awesomeness ensues..." Firefox sounds good too.
  
  
• Facebook news: divorced from the facts - "Everyone loves a good Facebook news story – or rather, a bad one. And over the past few days, a classic has emerged: Facebook will wreck your marriage." Tom Royal debunks the latest made-up statistics about Facebook.
  
  
• The Adventures of Eggplant - "In January 1998, a struggling 23-year-old standup comedian known only by his stage name Nasubi (Eggplant) heard about an audition... the producers... were looking for someone who was willing to be locked away in a one-bedroom apartment for however long it took to win a million yen (then the equivalent of about $10,000) worth of prizes in magazine contests. As if that wasn’t a weak enough offer, there was a catch -the contestant would have to live off the prizes he won." It took ten months before he managed to win any toilet paper...
  
  
• Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies - Excellent site explaining all different kinds of logical fallacy.
  
  
• Who Buys These Clothes? They Do - "A Peek Inside the Closets of Shoppers Who Pay Full Price for Designers' Latest Runway Looks." €55,150 for a dress? FFS.
  
  
• Toilet Map - "For those times when you need to find a loo in a hurry." Available in your browser or on iPhone, Android, and other mobiles: at the moment it only covers 943 toilets in London, but that's a start
  
  
• insane asylum plans - "Up to the 19th Century mentally ill people were sometimes chained naked in squalid conditions in places like London’s Bethlehem hospital which became synonymous with chaos (its name being contracted to bedlam) and where tourists would pay to see the freak show. Then came the extreme rationalism of the Kirkbride plan which created a very unusual form of architecture for asylums throughout the Anglosphere that was used until the 20th Century."
  
  
• The Museum of Retro Technology - Lots of wonderful old machines, including a device for automating the process of proving that Bacon wrote Shakespeare, and The Schilovski Gyrocar
  
  
• Every Day Posters Every Day - "No activity in your life is too boring or mundane. The idea is to take trivial activities and promote them with posters to give them a sense of importance they ordinarily would not have." E.g. "Picking food out of your teeth: Now in 3D!"

Happy invoicing!