How to not get ripped off in your line of business...

[Your Mom]

If you're going to trade stocks or options (esp. options at the open), don't use market orders. It's basically giving the market maker or specialist or whoever an invitation to [censored] you.

[Rootabager]

This is a great idea for a thread. I hope it blows up.

[cianosheehan]

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This isn't my line of business, I'm more on the receiving end, but I've had to put up with enough crap to be able to say a thing or two.

If you are getting any web-design job done, make sure you set some things straight before going ahead with whatever developer you are dealing with.

Firstly if you value any kind of confidentiallity get an NDA (Non disclosure agreement) signed between you. Make it as extensive as you wish. If they have a problem with any of the content they will let you know.

Your designer will give you an estimated build time. In my experience the speed of completion is ALWAYS overestimated. E.g if they say 2 months, expect it in 4 months. You have to make it clear to them at the start that you are aware of the delays that can come up during development and that you want absolute assurance that they do their best to deliver when they say they do. You may try figure some kind of deal to protect yourself from this, such as reduced fee if completed x amount of days over deadline. Although finding a company who would agree to this may be hard.

Most developers will give you a quote for the whole build which reflects their standard $$$/hour, and other associated costs. This quote doesn't change throughout the build. Since they know they will be getting their money either way, it doesn't really matter to them when the job is finished, because they are getting their money for hours put in either way.

If the development company is busy and working on multiple projects at once, they may have so much going on that coordinating a build and delivering it when promised becomes impossible.

Another thing, if you want X solution built, to combine with Y and resolve problem Z, developers may be aware that X+Y wont resolve Z, but they will build X and charge you for it anyway. Then you find out that Z isn't resolved, but hey, it's not their fault because you only asked them to build X. So, interrogate and confirm and explain the full scope of your problem, and make sure what you want done is what's needed to be done.

If you are going to hire a company, I'd recommend going through their portfolios and contacting anyone who they have worked for before, and making sure they are not a bunch of cowboys.

As I'm saying this, I just want to say that there are great and honest web developers out there. But there are definately those who will mess you around and not really care about the true resolve of your solution.

-Cian

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This is very interesting to hear from the receiving end. I'm a web developer who's worked on everything from one page websites to $10 million corporate projects with an AJAX front end. At many different places I've had to clean up after soooooo many horribly done jobs--both by internal employees who had no clue what they were doing--and by external shops that also had no idea what they were doing, and managed to rape the client in the process. It's hard to say which is worse to clean up after, generally the latter.

In my estimation you could do all the stuff you list above right and still have about a 50/50 chance of getting royally screwed. But at least that's down from maybe a 75% chance of disaster 5 years ago and a 95% chance 10 years ago.

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Hey,
Sounds like its even worse than I imagined! Would you have any further advice to add to my list?

Thanks
Cian

[suzzer99]

I think you nailed it pretty well from a client's POV. Check the portfolio, talk to as many existing customers as is feasible, and mainly try to get one really solid technical person you trust to evaluate the feasiblity of the job/timeframe and the quality of the people working on it. You'd be surprised how many people get hired or jobs get awarded when not one technical person from the client side has ever given the person or job a serious once-over.

Business people like to think that if they hire a person through a recruiter or award a job to an established seemingly reputable consulting firm, that the technical pre-screening has already been done for them. Which is simply not the case. It's still the wild west out there to some degree. But like I said, nothing as crazy as it was. Like when I knew fresh-out-of-school grads who didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground--flying all over the country, first-class, working for Scient (or Razorfish, or MarchFirst, or fill in your ridiculously overpriced late 90s web consulting firm here) working on giant whale carcass corporate projects.

[MissT74]

I own a medical billing service, which means I have to send bills to patients.

Never accept the bill as 100% correct. For the most part it is, but there are times where I will bill you if your insurance company doesn't respond to me quickly enough and a phone call by you to your company can get them to pay it instead of you paying it yourself. There are some patients that will just pay any and all bills they get blindly, not realizing that they can get it paid by their insurance company, they just need to be pro-active.

Never pay for a medical bill of a deceased loved one. Simply write "Deceased" on the bill, and even better, attach a copy of the death certificate. They will write off the bill.

If your insurance company denies a claim for you, ALWAYS appeal, you may not win, but the majority do just for making the effort.

T

[suzzer99]

Wow, those are 3 pretty sweet pieces of info. thx

[Rococo]

I'm a lawyer.

1) Make sure you talk to your lawyer about your expectations before he or she starts running the meter.

2) Don't "overbuy." A $200,000 contract between you and the Discovery Channel may be the most important thing in your life, but it is not the most important thing in the life of a partner at a 300 person law firm. Like everyone else, lawyers are busy. You run a grave risk of getting backburnered or receiving second rate service if you hire an attorney that typically handles much larger matters.

3) Don't be afraid to ask questions about the bill. Lawyers tend to bill more conservatively if they are dealing with clients who bitch about the bills.

4) Make sure that your attorney has some expertise in the relevant area. I can figure out patent law, but it will take me a hell of lot longer than it will take a patent attorney and it will be much more expensive for you in the long run.

[4drugmoney]

I started a similar thread because I didnt know this one existed. I would like to hear from some mechanics. I think I routinely get ripped off when it comes to car repairs.

[BigPoppa]

If you ever accept on of those "Buy now, don't pay until far off in the future" retail offers, make every damn payment on time.

If you're one day late with a payment, they will jack for insane interest from the date of purchase. Not from when you missed a payment, from the date of purchase. Many will never send a reminder of any kind until you've already missed a payment, because their business model is built around you being forgetful.

It's buried in fine print, but it's in there.