Dealing with service theft

Service theft - a bit like someone going through your underwear drawer and nicking your smalls

OK, so this is a deviation from my usual blog posts, as I wouldn’t normally bring a subject like unpaid invoices in to Stilus, as it is a happy place usually! But, over the past few months I’ve been stung a couple of times by people requesting my services and then refusing to pay me or even acknowledge me after I’ve done the work.

As a small business owner, this can hurt. It’s not just the outstanding money, which you factor in to your accounts and then struggle to recoup. It’s not just the extra time, effort and bad will that are caused by people taking services without paying, and trying to chase it. It’s the sheer rudeness of the theft, whereby I flog my guts out for hours to do a sterling job for someone, and they assume it’s OK to steal from me and not pay me back.

There have been a couple of people who have done this to me recently, and it’s making me sad, because I’m becoming more wary of whom I support through Stilus. Without doubt though, the best swindler I have met in a long time is a woman called Gail Gardner, at http://www.growmap.com/. Gail operates in the capacity of an ‘Internet Strategist’, and contacted me a few months ago asking me to write for a number of clients. At the beginning, all went well and she paid. From there, I guess she realised that she could just steal my services and offer writing work of a great quality to her clients, without them knowing that she was getting paid for it, and some idiot elsewhere was not.

As a strategist, I guess this is a canny way of making a business work, if you have no scruples and want to take your relationships to a new level of unpleasantness. Once the invoices went to Gail, she told me that she was having all manner of problems with her client relationships and couldn’t possible pay immediately. She even asked me to send her money through PayPal for her boyfriend, as she couldn’t access her account. Call me stupid? I actually did that!

I now feel totally betrayed. When someone comes across as personable and professional, I expect them to pay for my services. I’ve tried to contact Gail through e-mail and Twitter a number of times now, and received absolutely no response. Even the excuses have stopped. To my mind, this is like me going to a world-class restaurant and ordering great food, and then doing a runner at the end. It is unprofessional, illegal and frankly out of order.

So, my award for ‘unusual’ business strategist of the year goes to Gail Gardner of Growmap, the supposed ‘Internet Strategist’. My strategy? I’m going to pursue payment indefinitely. As an honourable business owner, I owe it to myself and my clients to recoup the outstanding amount, in order that I can continue to work with my own clients without becoming cynical or denying them the benefit of a mutually working relationship.

I may not have a barrage of lawyers at my disposable, but I have words and social networking. And I’m going to use them, every day, to chase payment until my outstanding bill is settled. Please support me by reposting my articles and Tweets relating to this situation, so that future freelance writers who may get involved with this unscrupulous person can be warned before they get taken for a ride.

Thank you for listening! I’ll keep you posted.

Jen (irate, let down) Syrkiewicz x