Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

When do you get to say F**** Off?

19 replies

quinne · 05/11/2008 20:44

This is not about my husband or family but about some a*se that I do business with. Its a husband and wife team and they talk to me / email in a high handed way almost all the time. Basically they send me clients and in return I do all the work and give them 50% of everything. So a good deal for them, no?

But its not enough and they are always pushing to get that little bit more (rather in the way toddlers test the boundaries). This week they asked yet another favour which i am not comfortable with but eventually i said ok as long as they guaranteed that if it went pear shaped they would pay half the costs. They agree but don't write it down and sign it. So i ask them to do this and they email it (which is worth zilch if it goes to court), so i write back saying I agree the words, could you just print it off, sign it and fax it to me. Then I get an email back from the husband saying he was so disgusted with my clear lack of trust that he won't talk to me any further and his wife would send the fax instead!! God how I would like to reply telling him what I think of him but my husband stopped me (he says we want this business). So I am ranting here instead.

Basically the couple especially the husband and abusive bullies and I have to take it whilst doing all their work for them. It makes me sooo mad!

So here's my question: is there ever a time when you get to tell someone to stuff it even when you need the money??

OP posts:
scaryfucker · 05/11/2008 20:46

you have to be a bit more inventive

spit in their coffee ?

quinne · 05/11/2008 20:49

Tempting but they are Dutch so a long way to spit!

OP posts:
HappyWoman · 05/11/2008 20:58

I cannot imagine being in that position - maybe i have always been lucky as i have always felt i could just walk out if it was not good for me.
Could you not get another job - it sounds as if they need you more than you need them.

quinne · 05/11/2008 20:59

by the way the fax just turned up and its blank.

OP posts:
sazzerbear · 05/11/2008 21:01

They should respect your wishes, after all you are only protecting your business - it's nothing personal! I'm sure they would be doing exactly the same if the boot was on the other foot!

HappyWoman · 05/11/2008 21:03

They are not supid either then - i am always suspicious of this sort of thing - if people wont put it in writing it shows they dont trust you surely

Vapido · 05/11/2008 21:04

They sound deeply unprofessional.
Could you advertise more in order to get your clients directly, and therefore cut them out of the loop?

scaryfucker · 05/11/2008 21:05

arrange for a dutch pizza delivery !

LittleWhizzingBella · 05/11/2008 21:06

God they sound perfectly vile

Yes sometimes there is a time, but the current economic climate ain't it!

I once knew a couple like this I wonder if it's the same one - she was Belgian he was English, they flitted between the 2 drinking champagne and irritating everyoen.

LittleWhizzingBella · 05/11/2008 21:07

e-mails are a slight greay area legally now aren't they - didn't I read somewhere about them being accepted in court? Dunno, I could be making that up

quinne · 05/11/2008 21:20

HW: they've nothing to trust me on. I'm the one taking all the risk and now I am asking them to share it. its about giving a guarantee for one of their clients to come to the country. If the client doesn't rob the hotel blind or crash their hire car, then its ok. If they do then the car company/ hotelier can come to me for the money. These clients can't get a visa without someone vouching for them.

But I do think that people who refuse everything except a handshake are more often than not conmen.

OP posts:
Ronaldinhio · 05/11/2008 21:23

email is acceptable now, non?

quinne · 05/11/2008 21:41

I don't think email is acceptable in holland and I'd have to go there to enforce it as there is no point in a British court ordering a dutch company to do something.

but even if emails are accepted by dutch courts, there was another problem with the email where he added a sentence to the email which might have made it harder to get a court to accept because he went on to give an example of the sort of thing they could do and say how ridiculous it was. So a judge would have seen that and maybe thought this is the sort of risk they were covering. So as well as asking him to print it off and sign it, i also asked him to leave out the example. So it had to be re-done anyway.

OP posts:
quinne · 05/11/2008 21:46

The thing is, this man is a real stickler for getting properly signed agreements when it protects him, so he knows what he is doing when he sent the emails.

OP posts:
warthog · 05/11/2008 22:09

how easy is it for him to find someone else to do the work?my guess is that it would be inconvenient and take time? in which case i def think you can start getting arsey.

and definitely don't do any more favours that you're uncomfortable with.

LittleWhizzingBella · 05/11/2008 22:46

Just make sure you never risk your own money.

People like this always always protect their interests and when it goes tits up for you, you're on yer own baby. Cover your back and if they refuse to allow you to, try and find someone else to do business with. People like this have lots of enemies so with good research you should be able to find them and strike up a deal with them instead of these two.

ithinkimtallandblonde · 05/11/2008 23:03

Stand your ground if they don't agree its too big a gamble anyway so worth telling them to f off. I know just what you mean, in the middle of dealing with appaling clients who don't deserve my time or courtesy but i can't afford to rub them up the wrong way.

quinne · 12/11/2008 15:40

I thought those of you who helped me here might be interested to hear the footnote of this story. By last Wednesday night I was very ill and very stressed. The Dutch couple didn?t cause the illness but I think they were the straw that broke the camel?s back. The upshot was that for the first time in my life I?ve got high blood pressure and it is bad enough to need medication. So I was not well enough to work until Monday this week and then only to do a few hours. The Dutch woman had been told by one of my team that I wasn?t working on Friday as I was sick.

So she called me early on Monday morning, and basically started to try to bully me into doing something else for her (it was collecting her clients fees to save her the effort). I said no. She insisted. I still said no. So she threatened to terminate our business relationship, which she did terminate when I still refused to back down.

Then she started to give me a lecture about professionalism and I am afraid I lost my temper. I told her that it wasn?t a subject I felt her company had anything to say about given her husband?s email of last Wednesday. Then she started to yell down the phone at me, so I hung up on her. It wasn?t very professional but I could feel my blood pressure rising and really didn?t want another hospital trip. She?s very full of herself and this is probably the first time that anyone has done that to her. An hour later her husband sent me a letter re-writing history even down to completely changing the text of the email the previous week. It seems that if the truth doesn?t fit their idea of how they see themselves, then they?ll just re-write it, even when there is written evidence to the contrary.

Since then, the woman has written to one of my team on Facebook encouraging her to communicate with her away from work ? ?can I have your mobile and personal email?.

Is there such a thing as a ?toxic? business associate?

For me the moral of the tale is get rid of people like this before the stress of dealing with them breaks your health.

OP posts:
Teaandcake · 12/11/2008 23:31

Hurrah for you Quinne! Well done!

New posts on this thread. Refresh page