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Question of the Day: How impressed have you been with the 2026 Amazon Prime Day deals?
So I did it
- Thread starter Sonic2k
- Start date
Cius
Honorary Master
Generators are fairly expensive to run. What about a decent UPS that gives 8 hours. It can charge after load shedding and will get you through the darkness.
jansdejager
Expert Member
Apart from the heavyweights of modern-day living it is surprisingly easy to maintain basic household functions like lights and home entertainment with a decent power backup. Petrol generators that cover your basics on a backup cable fixture is not beyond the reach of the moneyed classes.
Venomous
Honorary Master
And I have heard more and more people moaning that complexes do not want people using them....
Sonic2k
Executive Member
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2011
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- 4
Update: 8 Feb 2015
Time to be honest people. I saw my arse with this business.
It was not the work I did, nothing like that. Rather a fact of doing business in life in SA, which I think nobody talks about. This has really opened my eyes. However, there is a happy ending:
You have three kinds of customer:
Customer 1 - The thief. This one will pay a deposit, of exactly 50%, and take whatever he can get and run, and then have the cheek to lodge a case with the Consumer Protection Tribunal because he knows not what he is doing and doesn't understand how his sudden and numerous goal post changes causes scope creep no matter how well you do in MS Project. This is the one who explicitly tells you he has a 3rd party on hand to do the embedded software, then tells you in September you must do it, and then throws a hissy fit because you quote him extra for that. This particular douchebag has twice threatened me in my own premises. The last time I had the cops remove him from here, except he walked out of here with R3000+ of my stock of which he has refused to pay. This particular idiot is trying to get in with the ANC on his "green energy" crap ideas.
Customer 2- Mr Wealth. This customer has R100m+ in the bank. He dreams **** up all day every day because he has nothing better to do now that he has retired. I cannot say any more as this person was employed by a very large software company some years ago. and when this forum was young, his press releases were featured in the formative years of MyBroadband.co.za. Everything is "do this please, and get it done ASAP" and then when time comes to invoice, he nitpicks at the amounts charged, and forces me to revise invoices several times over, and to get him to pay I have to wait like 2-3 months. He cares not that FNB is about to foreclose my house, my car has already been repossessed, and my cellphone cut because I have no money whatsoever.
Customer 3- Mr Cheapskate. Most are refusing to pay my reasonable rate of R750/hour. This despite we all knowing of several palooka engineers in SA charging R1450/hour, and many plumbers now charging R700 + R350 call out and they are allowed to do this as dictated by the regulatory body they belong to.
So this is what I did, I went back to work. I work for a company that advertises here from time to time, and does recruitment here too, although the job came to me. I have decided to quit the electronics industry while I am ahead, and I am taking home, more or less the same money I used to get, doing proper development for the banking/payments industry. So yes, I changed my career, and got back up and got working again. Its been a bit of an adjustment working 8-5 Mon-Fri after having been at home for so many months, but the notable difference is, in IT, the arsehole factor is far far less.. I have not yet picked up issues (chips on shoulder, arrogance, etc) yet at the company I work for. It rolls differently... very differently. I work in a team with two other ex-electronic engineers, who also quit because of crap working conditions.
The good news is that, I transformed the business into something else that is working. Appliance repairs! This is what I did, over December, and into January, to put food on the table. Since I am now full time employed, I have therefore passed the baton onto a friend who has been unemployed for over two years. I train him on weekends, and during the week he runs the company and he is allowed to pull income from whatever work he does, all I ask is a contribution to the company overheads, and some kind of profit share when he turns it into a major franchise and we kick Bergen's on their arses. We took a lot of work away from Bergens (See hellopeter.com for how bad they are) over December. We fix appliances in most cases in the customer's home, including seriously difficult faults. Bergens always wants to take the machine away so they can get their "specially trained technicians" back at the office to see what they can do to damage the machine further. Special thanks is due to my wife who used facebook and twitter to get me all the work in. Thanks to this I managed to keep my house from being taken back by the bank, kept the lights on, and food on the table, although I will say that this was the worst Christmas ever.
So my business has premises in JHB and PE, and the PE branch, is represented by a forumite here on MyBroadband.co.za. His username is pedruid.
Time to be honest people. I saw my arse with this business.
It was not the work I did, nothing like that. Rather a fact of doing business in life in SA, which I think nobody talks about. This has really opened my eyes. However, there is a happy ending:
You have three kinds of customer:
Customer 1 - The thief. This one will pay a deposit, of exactly 50%, and take whatever he can get and run, and then have the cheek to lodge a case with the Consumer Protection Tribunal because he knows not what he is doing and doesn't understand how his sudden and numerous goal post changes causes scope creep no matter how well you do in MS Project. This is the one who explicitly tells you he has a 3rd party on hand to do the embedded software, then tells you in September you must do it, and then throws a hissy fit because you quote him extra for that. This particular douchebag has twice threatened me in my own premises. The last time I had the cops remove him from here, except he walked out of here with R3000+ of my stock of which he has refused to pay. This particular idiot is trying to get in with the ANC on his "green energy" crap ideas.
Customer 2- Mr Wealth. This customer has R100m+ in the bank. He dreams **** up all day every day because he has nothing better to do now that he has retired. I cannot say any more as this person was employed by a very large software company some years ago. and when this forum was young, his press releases were featured in the formative years of MyBroadband.co.za. Everything is "do this please, and get it done ASAP" and then when time comes to invoice, he nitpicks at the amounts charged, and forces me to revise invoices several times over, and to get him to pay I have to wait like 2-3 months. He cares not that FNB is about to foreclose my house, my car has already been repossessed, and my cellphone cut because I have no money whatsoever.
Customer 3- Mr Cheapskate. Most are refusing to pay my reasonable rate of R750/hour. This despite we all knowing of several palooka engineers in SA charging R1450/hour, and many plumbers now charging R700 + R350 call out and they are allowed to do this as dictated by the regulatory body they belong to.
So this is what I did, I went back to work. I work for a company that advertises here from time to time, and does recruitment here too, although the job came to me. I have decided to quit the electronics industry while I am ahead, and I am taking home, more or less the same money I used to get, doing proper development for the banking/payments industry. So yes, I changed my career, and got back up and got working again. Its been a bit of an adjustment working 8-5 Mon-Fri after having been at home for so many months, but the notable difference is, in IT, the arsehole factor is far far less.. I have not yet picked up issues (chips on shoulder, arrogance, etc) yet at the company I work for. It rolls differently... very differently. I work in a team with two other ex-electronic engineers, who also quit because of crap working conditions.
The good news is that, I transformed the business into something else that is working. Appliance repairs! This is what I did, over December, and into January, to put food on the table. Since I am now full time employed, I have therefore passed the baton onto a friend who has been unemployed for over two years. I train him on weekends, and during the week he runs the company and he is allowed to pull income from whatever work he does, all I ask is a contribution to the company overheads, and some kind of profit share when he turns it into a major franchise and we kick Bergen's on their arses. We took a lot of work away from Bergens (See hellopeter.com for how bad they are) over December. We fix appliances in most cases in the customer's home, including seriously difficult faults. Bergens always wants to take the machine away so they can get their "specially trained technicians" back at the office to see what they can do to damage the machine further. Special thanks is due to my wife who used facebook and twitter to get me all the work in. Thanks to this I managed to keep my house from being taken back by the bank, kept the lights on, and food on the table, although I will say that this was the worst Christmas ever.
So my business has premises in JHB and PE, and the PE branch, is represented by a forumite here on MyBroadband.co.za. His username is pedruid.
Nerfherder
Honorary Master
Wow... Just shows you how hard it is out there on your own. Then people wonder why so many business have gone under or have cash up front policies.
Nerfherder
Honorary Master
We need a cpa that protects the customer from the business and the business from the customer
Sonic2k
Executive Member
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2011
- Messages
- 7,636
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- 4
The CPA really doesn't want to get involved if its a B2B thing. It was specifically designed for the man in the street, not for two companies battling it out.
This idiot filed a case against me in his personal capacity, so we responded saying... wait a minute, I don't know of him as an individual client, only as a company... That shut him up good and solid.
Most people don't understand how electronic product development works. I am just tired of being blamed for their poor planning, and consequences of greed, and idiotic decisions.
In the above case, I have taken legal advice, and I don't lose sleep over it because this particular person has a long history of abusing people because he has this massive chip on the shoulder.
Software development, seems to be more well understood in SA. Will rather do that instead thank you very much.
Much less stressful worrying about coding, and QA, and testers, than having to worry about those things + costs + budget + production + lead times + suppliers + salaries/wages + accountants + debtors + creditors + accounts receivable + cashflow.
Nicodeamus
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2006
- Messages
- 14,477
- Reaction score
- 4,530
sadly if you land a big contract and you do not get paid in time then that can really nail your business. Small start up companies often do not have a capital to take the thiefs to task. Sorry to hear man!
Jet-Fighter7700
Honorary Master
Wonderful idea you got, wish my dad would get off his laurels and do what you did, he worked so long for a corporate that he knows nothing else,
Small suggestion from one of the other posters, can't you get one of those debt insurance companies to help you our with the thief's of the world.... who order and don't pay on time?
Nerfherder
Honorary Master
That wont help with the supplt problems... and will be useless in a full blackout
Nicodeamus
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2006
- Messages
- 14,477
- Reaction score
- 4,530
The best I found to do is to immediately go for sequestration of the debtor. If someone has an obligation to pay you money and cannot pay it back then it is an act of insolvency. Usually they pay because they get a big skrik. A lot of debtor companies and lawyers often have a recipe that they work with. They usually file a lawsuit and use sequestration as a last resort. I go for it directly.
DigitalSoldier
Honorary Master
This is true.
We recently did a massive project for BPC had a lot of travel expenses, and they also had a lot of demands even some of the reports we did had to fit everything on 1 page when its almost impossible to fit it on only 2 pages.
Now the project is done... Been struggling since October to get any kind of payment from them.
jansdejager
Expert Member
You would have done better getting some sort of partner onboard to deal with clients and getting thorough outcomes on paper. Being alone opens you up to all kind of abuse. Plus you might grasp the project succinctly but until a layman can understand every component the project is doomed.
TheMightyQuin
Not amused...
In all my years in business, running my own company, I have met quite a few people like you. Always the same issues in life and business and never, ever taking any of the blame for mishaps or failure...it is ALWAYS somebody else's fault.
Just reading back through all your ranting and ravings re. the corporate world, I am not at all surprised your business tanked.
Even in this post, as always, you manage to get your jibe in against Bergens. You live one massive conspiracy theory, don't you, in which it is basically you against The World...
I wonder how long before this business also fails and cannot wait to read your posts and to see who'll get blamed this time.
Venomous
Honorary Master
I am glad that you managed to find another avenue to earn money.
Though maybe this experience has been good for you. You spewed hate for anyone/anything that was boss related. Very different to now.
I have managed to run my own business for approx 7 years. Though not always easy the rewards can be great, though not in the electronics/electrical field. It is a dog eat dog world out there. I have customers that are bad payers (they have been moved to prepay-before-the-item-is-used, or no deal), clients I have refused to do business with. And then most of the clients are great payers, and generally have excellent personalities. But to get there took time, and money.
All the best with the new venture.
Though maybe this experience has been good for you. You spewed hate for anyone/anything that was boss related. Very different to now.
I have managed to run my own business for approx 7 years. Though not always easy the rewards can be great, though not in the electronics/electrical field. It is a dog eat dog world out there. I have customers that are bad payers (they have been moved to prepay-before-the-item-is-used, or no deal), clients I have refused to do business with. And then most of the clients are great payers, and generally have excellent personalities. But to get there took time, and money.
All the best with the new venture.
Apples and oranges.. You get the other stuff if you run the software company and while it may look less picky it really isn't.. End of the day someone signs off on things and they can still be like any of those three you encountered.
OrbitalDawn
Ulysses Everett McGill
Got the same vibe from his posts, tbh.
TehStranger
Executive Member
+1.
Good luck Koosi, but maybe read MightyQuin's post a few times without taking it as a personal attack. Hopefully it helps you move forward.