Would you believe me if I told you they still had not paid???

This cartoon sums up the way I started my day yesterday.

I came in to my office yesterday in the am and received an email from the same General Contractor in the blog of three weeks ago saying they did not have current insurance certificates and won't pay until they get said certs. OK, they got the first set in FEBRUARY, the second set in June (policy renewed on 7/1) third set in AUGUST and Fourth set in SEPTEMBER. Now remember this is for a job that is $6,600 ~ TINY compared to our average job! That was all I needed to hear this time.

I did two things:

1. sent an email to my insurance company requesting the return receipts for each time they emailed a copy of the certs to said company

2. forwarded the email where they received the information multiple times.

THEN I brought out the big guns. I called the client. See I am a vendor for the same client so I know some of the fantastic staff that they have and they deserve to know how the GC they have hired hasn't been responsible to the vendors on the project. I told the client that although the GC was as nice as they could be they haven't paid the first dime on a four month old bill and have given me the same insurance certificate run around for months. Last iteration was three weeks ago and now the entire job is finished and I don't have the first dime.

I got an email this morning. The GC is cutting my check tomorrow. Of course, I won't believe it until I see it.

This is the part of the blog where I express how grateful I am. Grateful that we are 20 years old, well networked, and big enough to not have to WORK FOR GC'S THAT OFTEN! See the trick here is to realize they have already been paid by the client for my part of the work so they have been sitting on my pay for months without any kind of reasonable excuse. This is a small town and our paths will cross again, do you think that I will ever work with them again?

I guess that depends on how rough an economic ride we are on. I would rather fly off on my broom like Helga.

PS off to NYC for a few days so more blogs soon!