Let me start by saying that I have been an independent contractor, working with PPT since 2005. They've always been "high maintenance" and slow to pay, but things have gotten completely out of hand.
I was contacted on march 3rd by Stephen Walker, a Prism Point 'partner manager' about providing 5 laborers for a job at the Pensacola Navy base, to move and un-box replacement plasma TV's for the dormitories. I explained to him that I would be able to provide the laborers, but that we would have to do weekly invoicing on the ticket, because my company was unable to cover net30 on the payroll. Stephen referred me to the project manager, Jeff Orvis.
Jeff assured me that this should not be a problem, that I could email him weekly invoices and that he would submit them for payment and contact accounting to have them expedited. With his assurances, we sent our team to work. The job was estimated to run 10 days to 2 weeks.
The job took 3 and 1/2 weeks. I submitted my weekly invoices to Jeff as we had agreed... But after 3 weeks, we had not received a check, or any indication that one would be forthcoming. I emailed Jeff regarding this several times, and received assurances that they were being processed and not to worry.
My team finished the job on 3.31.09. The Total invoice amount was just a little over $13,000.
I finally got in contact with Mitch Wright, who is supposedly the head of accounts payable, after leaving about 400 voice mails and then whining to a help desk guy to get him to go put a postit note on his monitor. He told me that he'd never received any of the weekly invoices but that if i could email them to him he would process them asap. So i emailed him my invoices on 4/9/09. I was never able to contact him again to verify that he actually received them, he never returned another phone call, but after a week i broke down and submitted the full invoice on the PPT partner website... Which I suppose I should have done in the first place.
Meanwhile, I have spent every DIME my company had in reserve to meet payroll for this job, and still cant get a PEEP out of these people as to when I can hope to receive payment.
Anyhow, from the NUMEROUS other posts regarding this company, I get the impression that posting a report here seems to be a pretty good way to get their attention... So i hope I get a call back, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
Any thoughts on how to proceed from here? I'm open to suggestions.
0 comments