Adventures with Lyrical: Buying a Business (REPOST)

Cad said:

Sure hope you're exaggerating like you always do or this was a stupid piece of shit judge.

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He did a good job.

Their complaint was that the job was not done professionally and to their satisfaction. So they requested they be released from paying anything (in their Court papers).

We've developed a system over the years, based on legal advice from more than one Lawyer, where everyone has a digital fingerprint, including call recording and equipment tracking. People change contracts on us all day. The unscrupulous ones add to their contract, and then try to say they never added to it. You know how that plays out in Court. The Judge throws out the addition, without a signature. Now, if there's a contract change, the call is recorded, and an email confirmation is sent.

So, bottom line, I opened with "Judge, this is the easiest case I've ever argued. In their own words, they admitted the job was done to their satisfaction." I played a recording of them speaking to the Office Manager, where they stated the work was "done well" and "done good."

After that, the Judge refused to listen to any of the other recorded calls. He said he didn't want to hear any more calls, and he'd accept my testimony on them. I also showed the incoming/outgoing calls (call log). Two months later, when they finally picked up when we'd called on non-payment, they said they didn't like how the job was done. They told us we had to fix the job, but it had to be set by appointment. We showed we'd called them 20 times in five months to set an appointment after that point, and not once did they pick up.

By the time the defendant got up, he was pretty much ignoring them. They didn't present one piece of evidence, just "he said, she said." They claimed they had call logs showing that they'd called us over times, and we ignored them. But when asked to show the call logs, they didn't have them. The Judge's response was, "If you don't have the call logs, that's fine. They opposing party has already provided them to me." And the Judge wasn't having it.

The Judge ruled that they had the legal obligation to let us cure the problem, and the term of "impossibility" came up also. They made it impossible to even inspect our work. They barred us from stepping foot on the property. We even drove out there to ring the doorbell. They didn't deny that we were there. Once we were there to fix the problem, and they wouldn't even let us inspect it, the Judge said they lost. I believe the UCC code that applied was 2-508 (correct me if I'm wrong) that absolved me of any future work, once they turned us away (combined with the 20 calls they ignored).

Cad said:

Sure hope you're exaggerating like you always do or this was a stupid piece of shit judge.

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So tldr version, the Judge didn't want to look at any more of my evidence past the recording, and I had to be forceful to get him to look at anything else. It was the same with her. He kept cutting us off mid-sentence. It really kind of threw me off. I had tons of evidence and pictures of the jobsite, and he didn't want to see it. The first piece of evidence nailed it. As a matter of fact, he told me he had all he needed from me, and that I did a good job.

I prefer Judges who actually look at evidence. In small claims court, the Judges don't always look at evidence. They go based on personal statements. Only when I get my Lawyer involved, do they look at the evidence (and then I win). To date, I've only lost one case, and that was before we had our systems in place. Doing business on a handshake died 30 years ago. Hell, I can remember a time where we contracted with people without even getting a signature. Because that's the way the previous owner did business.

Tarrant said:

So signed a lease for 3 years a few days ago for what will he Tarrants Big Escape Room. (Not the real name)

This has been something I've been working towards for some time now, my divorce caused me to reevaluate a lot of things about myself and it slowly became more and more of a priority for me to do.

At the end of the month I'm flying out to an aquantience who runs a very suscceful room in Rhode Island and will spend a week there seeingbhow he runs his. He's willing to show me the ins and outs, and while I know how I want to do things, his model has been beyond successful and I really look forward to picking his brain and am thankful for that opportunity.

After I'll fly back home and begin our build out shortly after. It shouldn't take to long, I hope to be open in June. The location I got is great and pretty centurally located in a city that while not huge, is sprawled out quite a bit.

At any rate, I'm pretty happy and looking forward to this new adventure.

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Are you getting a bank loan on this, or doing it out of pocket?

We continue to sue people. Last check, the count was $11,000 in unpaid invoices. Slowly but surely, they are settling up, or going to Court and losing. We had a ticket for about $2,300 where they tried to pay 650. This is the one where they alleged we did damage, and then google street view showed the damage was there two years' prior. We finally found a call that had them dead to rights. The owner of the house said we told her two items for 650 on the phone. Unfortunately, the Office Manager only had it recorded that they wanted the two items, and the amount was left off of the call. We found another call with her son-in-law going over the entire ticket. He said his lady texted it to him, and that he was going to review it with the owner. Our Lawyer was sending in a request to their phone company to see if they texted the contract back and forth to each other. This whole time, they've been telling us 1k, or they'll "come after me." Am I supposed to be afraid. She owns her own metal fabrication company, and is supposed to be influential and wealthy. I have no chance, they say. They've called and made it a point to tell me that. I hate bullies. They've come up to 2.3 after we found that call. We told them we wanted a Court date.

So out of that 11k, 6k has paid or is going to pay. The other 5k we still need to sue. It takes awhile for us to gather data and sue.

It's a shame that people don't honor their word, or signed contracts. This would be so much easier if I took money up front.

Tarrant said:

A small business loan is covering aproximitly 25% of my start up costs.

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I'm going to suggest a line of credit, if you can get it, to cover the slower times. When we bought this business, we requested a credit line of 160k, and got it.

Cad said:

Recording calls is a good idea. People say all kinds of shit that sounds horrible when played back. Good job.

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Thanks.

These recorded calls are burying people in Court. Because they'll say the job wasn't done to their satisfaction in Court, but in the meanwhile they had a recorded call 60 days prior saying the job was done well. My employees that were present at the trial tell me the defendants started squirming when I told the Judge I had a recorded call stating the exact opposite of what they were claiming. And when I pulled out the call logs, they kept squirming, because they know they had dodged us for seven months. The problem with Small Claims Court is that Judges don't always look at evidence. I've been to some of the rural areas where the Judges didn't understand newfangled things like satellite tracking or internet recorded call tracking.

I can't believe that I've owned the company almost nine years now. When I first started, we trusted people so much that we didn't get signatures from people when they agreed to contracts. Really. Trying to collect on people has ruined my trust for people.

Cad said:

Thats lyrical and he's a yard guy.

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Not lawn mowing - our average ticket is $763.

Tarrant said:

I planned on it at some point. I don't foresee the need at present time but it's not about that its about preparing for everything that could happen that you dont foresee. When I had my old business a decade ago I ran with a $50k line, I'll probably do the same here.

On a side note, I haven't kept tabs on this thread in awhile. What is your business?

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I changed my forum handle. Hell, Lyrical was my first character in an MMO (Everquest Bard). That game is almost 20 years old, and I played at launch. That was a long time ago, and EQ doesn't have much meaning to me anymore.

TrollfaceDeux said:

Tell me about it, bro.

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I used to do business on a handshake. That is until the first time I went to Court and the Judge awarded me $0 on a 500 contract because it wasn't signed. And then we had a contract where they added 700, where the Judge also threw that out. So yeah, any contracting we do now is signed for, with recorded calls and email acknowledgements. Those were the only two cases I lost, because we boned up on our evidence gathering.

All of the employees know this - if a customer makes an addition to a contract, and they didn't get a signature, they bought it themselves. They can pay me or GTFO.