Abandoned jobs

imsoco

We have had 6 jobs come to us in the past few weeks where the client was left hanging without software or a responsive dealer. 5 were crestrong and 1 AMX. Two of the dealers were booted from the jobs, the rest took the money and ran.
Has anyone else seen this happening in their area?

ondrovic

wow thats really shady, was it the same company for all the jobs? I haven't heard of it happening around my area.

Spire_Jeff

We have had a few people/companies go out of business in the last year or two. We have also had a few instances of people being kicked out jobs. It happens. Most of the incidents aren't intentional on the part of the installers, they either promise more than they can deliver (but had full intentions of providing what was promised.... mostly due to lack of experience) or they are capable of doing the job, just not capable of running a business and keeping a steady cash flow or operating at a profit.

Atleast that is what I have seen in my area.

Jeff

GSLogic

30% of my work is fixing other dealers/programmers blunders, which come from their lack of experience and/or knowledge... but I'm not complaining.

bano

In my neck of the woods, they're referred to as "orphans", abandoned by circumstance through no fault of their own. This market (Phoenix, Az) is quite volatile. AV companies come and go quickly. The last 3 companies I worked for are history (not my fault). These companies did great work, but the folks in charge failed to bid projects for profitability or manage cash flow. I'm now self-employed, being outsourced by several companies who do not have programmers on their staff, and I still service the clients whose systems I programmed in the past. Bottom line is I'm always happy to adopt "orphans".

DHawthorne

Cash flow is the biggest bane to this industry. You have to lay of a lot of money initially, and if the project lags for reasons outside your control, you are stuck with an unfinished project with all the equipment bought by you and perhaps even installed, but not paid for. I have had a few projects that died on the vine because the customer ran out of money; if all you did was wiring, it's not so bad, but if it's a lighting control and that stuff is already installed, well, that can hurt. After a few of those we re-worked our payment schedules so that we won't get stuck if that happens, but in younger, more trusting days, we did get burned a few times. Younger and smaller companies are much, much more vulnerable to this.

I've also seen projects stall for years (I had one tabled because the homeowner had to sue his GC to get it done), and sometimes you just have to sit on your investment when that happens. Not everyone can, and either has to move on or fold because they were overextended.

And sometimes it's just a matter of bad chemistry with a customer. I have had to work with a few doozies in my day, and I'm kind of used to it, but if you don't know how to deal with dificult customers without them walking all over you, there can be a strong temptation to just walk out on the job. I happen to be more motivated by pride in my work than by the money, so I generally try to salvage these things, but you can't ignore the bottom line either. If you have a customer who insists repeatedly that you owe him things that aren't in the contract, and browbeats your sales team about it, they often cave in to make him happy. If it's a few hundred dollars on a tens-of-thousands kind of job, heck, you may as well give it to him. But, you can only do so much of that. When there is truly no profit left in a job because of a difficult customer, what are your recourses? Mind you, though I generally blame management of the project for letting such a customer run away with the job like that, sometimes it's a deliberate ploy by the customer to get rid of you and not pay what he agreed.

All these things can end up in an orphaned job as well as simple incompteance of the original installer.