Bill Carson from 3 Geeks and a Mouse calls on 8/20/07 and asks me if I can provide emergency on-site services for a client of theirs. He told me he could not pay me my current hourly rate and offered $2 per hour less. I agreed, and was told to show up and represent a "national nursing home paging service provider" (name left out intentionally). I arrived on-site within 30 minutes of the initial phone call and finished the job that day. I sent him an invoice for my services the next day.
I followed up to make sure that he received my invoice. He agreed that he had everything he needed and assured me that I would receive payment just as soon as he was paid. He then told me that it would be about a month. I called him about a month and a half later (around 10/03/07) and he told me that they (the same "national nursing home paging service provider") had just paid him and he would get a check out to me "right away."
I did not receive a check. I did not even receive an email to let me know what was going on. So, on 11/08/07 I resent my invoice to him letting him know that unless I received payment by 11/15/07, I would be adding a 15% financing charge.
Today (11/27/07), I called him again and he said that he had been paid and he would "look into" getting me paid. I asked him if he could "confirm that I would be getting paid." He immediately hung up on me. After he hung up on me, I sent my invoice again (this time with the finance charges) and decided to write off ever getting paid.instead, I am hoping to prevent other IT repair companies and consultants from losing money by writing this!
3 Geeks and a Mouse (3geeksandamouse.com, 3geeksandamouse) says that it does "not have a physical location" and that "3 Geeks and a Mouse services the entire United States." This may be true, but it is my experience that they do this via the hard work of third party computer repair companies like mine. They search for people to do the work, collect payment and don't forward on what they promise. I suspect that the companies that hire 3 Geeks and a Mouse are not aware of how the contractors are treated and if you are ever contacted by them to do some work... Save yourself some time and money by saying no.
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