TL:DR: Shady Businessman booby traps account to collect overdue money and gets me blamed. Exposes he's grossly overcharging small businesses. I inherit his customers and drop the cost for his previous customers from over $1 million to $80,00
I'm going to keep this intentionally vague and I apologize for the long read, but this has been a little bit of a complex situation that requires a bit of backstory.
I (29M) own a specialized equipment cleaning and maintenance company. I've been running the company for the last 12 years. I take great pride in my work and run an honest business. We service everything from Government facilities to small mom and pop operations and I try to make everything as clear, transparent, and honestly priced as possible.
For the last 10 years I've had had a great relationship with Big Company. Big Company is a service provider, something of a middleman actually, in my industry. They contract me to service roughly 35% of their customer base and we have grown to have a mutual respect for one another. They're probably my largest customer, or at least close. Well, roughly two years ago Big Company brought on another service provider to contract owned by Shady Businessman. Shady Businessman claims he has many different skills and credentials and handles a lot of the more maintenance and installation side of things for Big Company.
I often do follow up work at businesses that he's done installs at - it's not good. Improperly installed equipment. Crazy repairs and electrical work that just don't make sense. It's horrible. Talking to customer after customer, I find he's taking advantage of their mechanical ignorance. Up charging 400% the price of parts and double, even triple the usual going hourly rate for this kind of work. For example, a $300 part that would take two hours to install, he's charged $1,500 for the part and another $1,500 for labor. Crazy. I mention it Big Company and they tell me "he's such a knowledgeable and experienced guy, usually those kind of guys come at a premium." Whatever. I leave it be and stay in my lane.
Flash forward about a year and to the start of my troubles - I get a call from the owner of Big Company telling me "hey, we have a new account, they're a bit more complicated, a little out of our wheelhouse. Can we give the account to you?" Sure. Within a week I'm down at the account doing a cleaning and maintenance. The type of system they have is a bit more complicated, but I am very experienced and familiar with these systems and it isn't an issue. Or so I thought. I go to start everything up and the system isn't turning on properly. The owner comes in and says "hey, we're going to have to start operations in a little over an hour. Are we good to go?" I tell him "the system seems to not want to start, I'm going to track down the issue and we should be good to go." He gives me a frustrated huff and leaves the room.
Fifteen minutes later I get a call from Shady Businessman. "Hey OP, I heard you're down at XYZ account. Owner wants you to stop work immediately and head out. I'm going to come down there to take over." Owner comes back in the room and confirms "Hey we're like 45 minutes from open and we've used Shady Businessman in the past, we just need to get this system going." Sure. I take off.
A few days go by and I get a call from the account. They tell me I'm going to need to call my insurance and file a claim. Their system is broken. Needs a new motor. $58,000 repair cost. We go back and forth for awhile with me trying to figure out what they're talking about. They're adamant I broke this system on the word of Shady Businessman. Call insurance or see us in court. I call up my insurance. They're specific to my industry and have specialists that know the ins and outs of the job. I tell their expert every step I performed in my work. They say there's no way I damaged the motor, but they'll take care of everything.
A little while later I get a call from Shady Businessman. He says "hey man, I'm sorry. It wasn't meant to be you." "What do you mean?" Shady Businessman "Well, to be honest, I had done a lot of installation work for this company like six months back. They owe me something like $12,000. I figured if their system wasn't working they'd call me in a pinch, have to pay me the money they owe me to get me down there. Plus, I'd have some guaranteed work doing the repairs on their system. It was supposed to be one of Big Company's guys though, not you. So I'm sorry man." I was livid. This dude booby trapped the system so that when it was being taken apart, the release of this sensor would short the motor. I try everything I can to get him to admit it again, text me, email me, say it on the phone. Anything now that I'm collecting evidence. No dice.
I tell my insurance. They say they'll get everything taken care of. It's all I can do. I tell the account, which is a pretty small business and they're livid. See the thing is, Shady Businessman is a smooth talker. He makes up a lot of complicated stuff the customer doesn't understand and they just think he's the smartest guy around. So far he's cost this small business near $70k in unnecessary work. I warn off my customer base from this dude, try to get word around in the industry a little bit, but it's also hard to do so without seeming like some bitter dude without any evidence trying to blame shift.
Four months go by. I get a call from the account's insurance. Standard business insurance. This insurance agent is a dill hole. Apparently he worked in the industry for a short while and considers himself an expert. Imagine being a surgeon and getting lectured by someone that took an anatomy class once. He was so obnoxious. He's telling me I need to get a different insurance company because my insurance is garbage, they've denied the claim because they're claiming it's not my fault and anyone with half a brain can figure out that I'm at fault. I explain the situation to him. He just thinks I'm some dude trying to avoid accountability. They've paid out $58,000 for repairs on this system and they want me to pay $1,000 for the customer's deductible. Non negotiable, pay or court.
I'm so over this situation, I just pay the $1,000 and move on. Well that same day I'm picking up supplies from a warehouse and I run into Big Company's owner and owner of even Bigger Company that I've been trying to pick up as a customer. We get to talking and I tell them about the insurance call I got, explain the back story a bit. Their faces both go pale. Apparently, they've both been using Shady Businessman and they've been having all manner of issues, but he's such a smooth talker, they've never connected it to him. They begin telling me all the issues they've been having at their different locations. Everything from electrical problems to some "state of the art equipment" that was installed by this guy that created a whole slew of problems that surprise surprise, only he could fix.
They're curious if I can take over handling his role for them. They want to cut ties. I tell them certainly. I've expanded what my business can cover and we can take over the backlog of work Shady Businessman has waiting for him. The next day they both send me lists of all the work they're waiting on him to do. One by one I start putting together quotes for each job. The list they sent me has Shady Businessman's existing quote figures on there and I'm finding that most every quote I'm putting together is half, if not a quarter of the price and that's being generous to my own wallet. Some jobs include fees for things that sound complicated but are just made up terminology. One job for example, he's upcharged the equipment cost from $75 for the part to $600, is charging $1,800 in labor for a one man, two hour install, and has added an additional hazardous material charge (not at all a thing for this job) for nearly $1,200. So $3,600 total to a little mom and pop brick and mortar that I dropped the material down to $75, the labor down to $600 and dropped the hazmat removal entirely. From $3,600 to $675.
We're so specialized that really there's only a few of us in the state and this mom and pop felt like they had no choice. Another job was $800 per $100 part times 6 plus nearly $15,000 dollars in labor (for a six hour job) for something one guy could do, plus an additional mileage fee of $400 (he lives 10 miles away) plus a "material transportation fee" like what? These six parts could fit in a backpack. Over $20k for a job that I ended up charging $3,000 for. This is another small business trying to open a second location and this dude is being so Shady and manipulative with his pricing. He's going to drive them out of business as they're trying to take a leap and open a second location. Breaks my heart.
All in all, after I priced everything out, he had bid out a little over a million dollars in work for himself over the next six months that I got down to just over $280,000. From a tad over $1 million to a bit over $280,000. I could not believe it. My new customers I've inherited have all been so grateful and gotten me connected with even more work in just a short while, I've easily doubled my business as a result of this over such a short time.
Shady Businessman is apparently not doing well. The smaller businesses have some sort of Facebook group that word has been going around in not to use him and it's gotten to the bigger business and corporations and now his credentials have been exposed as bogus. Businesses he was doing work for, big household names are calling me to take over as their local provider and it's just the start. I genuinely hope people start taking legal action against him. Taking advantage of businesses, often struggling to get, just because