Customers I’d rather not have
I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a while, but now its atlast safe to write. I’m a strong believer in working hard, and in general for those that work hard they will reap the benefits - although it may take some time.
What I don’t like is people who abuse other peoples good will, or are deliberately malicious in their actions.
There is a national body called Business Link who provide advice to startup and existing businesses and help them overcome their business problems. In the Coventry area, Business Link are targetted with helping some of the poorest areas, or areas that have been identified as needing financial injection to get them “better”.
Now there is generally funding available from Europe or from the government to help these businesses - but there is a catch to stop the system being abused. If for a project to improve a business comes to, for sake of argument £5000, Business Link will provide funding for 50%, as long as the company provides the other 50%.
The majority of projects that Zarr have done for Business Link are exactly along these lines where companies want to have an new online presence, or even extend their existing website. There are other bodies providing the same type of services as Business Link.
As from a few weeks ago, Zarr has “sacked” a client who had used us to get free funding money on the pretence of us doing work for them. The whole thing had gone on for quite a while (in the league of 1-2 years), but we were dupped into providing the necessary paperwork, but we never received the money and our “sacked” client pocketed it. It came to several thousand pounds that they benefited from.
This annoys me on two sides - firstly the funding money comes from taxpayers money - so people like you and me. So its short changing us. Secondly, its just utterly dishonest and a complete abuse of the system thats setup to help businesses. That money could have helped someone else who was in need of it.
There were some other reasons contributing to us sacking the customer, but I do take a small element in satisfaction that they had to setup their website again. It must have taken them time and money and I would guess quite a bit of stress and hastle.
