à la recherche du temps perdu

This week, I was giving some advice to a friend. She and her partner have been trying to collect from a reseller who has been delinquent on his account for over a year. The issue had been on the backburner for them because it was a small invoice, and they’ve been too busy with their real customers to follow up. This week, they finally received payment, along with a condescending note claiming that half of the goods suffered shipping damage, and that the reseller undertook it upon himself to pay for advertising to support sales of her product. The bottom line was that the reseller insinuated that she owed him money. No damaged report with the shipping company, no photos of damaged boxes, no evidence, and most importantly no explanation of why he dodged their phone calls and emails for a full year.

Regardless, all of this is beside the point, except as the lead in to a funny story an acquaintance of mine once told me. He used to work as a national account rep for Admiral appliances way back when, and one day he paid a surprise visit to the head office/distribution center of a well-known Canadian home furnishings retailer. He walked in via the loading dock entrance around the back, and since he was wearing a suit and tie, the workers assumed he was a head office guy, and ignored him as he poked around their operation.

Well, at the same time that he was nosing around, a truck loaded with Admiral washers and dryers came in and the workers started receiving them. My friend noticed that the foreman was marking two out of every three cartons with a giant “X” in black magic marker, and then scribbling notes on a clipboard. So he sidles over and says “Receiving washers, eh?”
“Yeah.” Says the foreman.
“So, what’s with the X’s you’re marking on those units?” He asked.
“I’m reporting them as dented in shipping, with hidden damage.” Responded the foreman, “I give this report to the buyer, and then Admiral will send him a rebate to compensate us.”
“I see.”
“Yeah, it’s free money. Pretty smart, really.”

Needless to say, Admiral’s relationship with that retail chain ended later that day.

If any of you have fond remembrances of shady dealings or sly business partners, send them to me to publish here. I promise to omit names to protect the guilty.

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