I have been involved in a number of very frustrating negotiations lately:
- I worked with a business to sublease their office space and provided forward in the best intents. They ended up pulling the rug out from under me when a bigger tenant came by… but first they led me on for a month and a half. The real estate agent Louis Goldstein of Los Angeles really did the wrong thing by saying he was going to represent me and the current tenant then not telling me anything about the other potential tenant till they closed the deal. I am pretty sure this actually violates the guidelines in California for real estate agents.
- One of my retainer clients is refusing to pay for work that was already done. Pretty sure I am going to have to drag him to court and collections to get paid for the work we did. I spent 2.5 hours meeting in person with him on Friday and got nowhere.
- We rarely use outside contractors, but we brought in one to help with some specialized programming work and the guy is not delivering the last little bit of work he needs to do. A couple dozen emails have gone back and forth.
What have I learned from these frustrations?
- Always get all the details included in the contract in writing so there is no debate
- Use excellent scopes of work showing exactly what work needs to be done.
- Certain people just suck and you will have to deal with them in business. It’s basically unavoidable.