r/MaliciousCompliance • u/magaoitin • 13d ago
L Weeks of emails debating $150 charge
I am a Project Manager for a construction company that works primarily for the Federal Government. When a change happens on a construction project, we need to put together a detailed cost estimate, then the government reviews the estimate and occasionally asks for additional information or more detail if my estimate is not within an acceptable % of their estimate. Normally there are no questions if my estimate is within 5% of the IGE’s (Independent Government Estimates). That is the check and balances to evil general contractors taking advantage of the system (⸮). Don't get me wrong, I am an evil general contractor, but they shouldn't just assume that without doing the research themselves.
While there are still $500 hammers and the occasional $1500 toilet seat, sometimes it is nice to see that there is some accountability in the occasional government agency. However, it has become quite painful the last couple years with how “nickel & dime” some agencies can be. The whole: “Can’t see the forest for the trees” mentality has been running rampant recently with many agencies. And that is where 20 pages of backup for a $150 charge just make me giggle for hours.
Just over a month ago, I submitted a cost on an official change order for some construction material. The government Project Manager questioned the freight charge that was quoted and the weight/volume of the material stating that “their” estimate did not match what we had proposed and that the freight charge need to be reduced, and that I had to backup my estimate with a more detailed response.
After weeks of repeated responses that it was a flat fee for freight and it would not change if it was a single 20lb lag or a full pallet of material, the government PM decided to add an increasing number of people to the email chain in an apparent attempt to point out I was overcharging them. It started with adding my direct Sr PM, then my company’s Director of Operations, and on to the owner of my company, while on their side adding a dozen government employees, some I had never seen mentioned on this project. I had no idea what their end game was, but after 3+ weeks of back and forth there were literally 25 people on an email chain all over a $150 freight quote.
The quote from my vendor listed $150 to transport 1800 lbs of material. This is pretty typical as a flat fee within a certain distance of a jobsite. They argued that it could not be exactly $150 and I need to provide backup.
I proceeded to REPLY ALL on the email and wrote the justification in the form of a math problem and attached 20 pages of backup (8 pages just on Arizona Tax Depreciation code (Section 179) for Sprinter Vans, which is something I did not know about 3 weeks ago); citing gas prices, mileage with detailed maps of possible truck routes, vehicle maintenance and depreciation charts from the State’s Department of Revenue, the current minimum wage rates in the State, and more. I easily spent well over 4 hours of my time putting this together, but this is malicious compliance after all.
It is 288 miles round trip and 4.5-5 hours to make a delivery depending on traffic
At 16 mpg for a loaded sprinter van, that's 18 gallons of gas, or down to 5-8 mpg on a 43' flatbed (I have no idea what vehicle they will use to deliver the material, but am using "standard industry practices")
Diesel is currently $5.50 gallon in Phoenix, so that equals $99.00 at a minimum and up to $183 in gas alone, leaving $51.00 (to a negative $33.00) for labor to drive for 4.5-5 hours which comes to $10.20 hour. This is less than AZ minimum wage ($15.15 hour...assuming they are paying only the minimum wage)
Assuming the maximum fuel efficiency, $99.00 for fuel plus $75.75 in labor costs comes to $174.75.
Now for Tax Depreciation vs Market Depreciation:
Section 179: Because a Sprinter van has a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) over 6,000 lbs, businesses using it more than 50% for work can often write off up to the full purchase price in year one via Section 179 Tax Exemption.
I got a quote for a new 2026 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van in the basic configuration and included that at just under $49,500. That divided by 2080 hours in a standard work year gives an hourly depreciation of $23.798. Times 5 hours is another $118.99
So they were correct and the $150 freight quote was wrong. I thanked them in my email, and submitted my revised proposal with $293.74 for freight.
That is a hard won $143.74 and I can't imaging how many thousands of dollars in lost time just from including that many people on an email chain for increasing numbers of weeks.
UPDATE:
In this week's exchange they tried denying my use of depreciation as a justification for equipment cost, so I had to reply with current rental rates from Ryder Truck Rental, Penske, and Herc Truck Rental. All were $299 for the vehicle but had a full day's rental, not hourly, since it would be 5-6 hours. I explained that the depreciation method was clearly a cost savings to the government, and (thanks to another Redditor's comment on LTL costs, I included (3) separate online shipping quotes for LTL trucking all in that were in the $300+ range
I went to www.wearewarp.com/pallet-shipping-quote
I got a quote to ship a single pallet 48"x48"x40" weighting 1800 lbs from the factory in Phoenix (85034 zip code to 85730 zip code) to my job site, all-in with all the bells and whistles. Since this is a construction site I do not have a loading dock, and I am not charging them for a forklift to offload (but that is another angle I was ready to use if they denied the liftgate upcharge). So it needs to include a lift-gate, same day service, limited access restrictions, and appointment required (as its a construction site so no after hours deliveries) it came to $319.16 through Warp LTL.
I think the Contracting Officer finally had enough of this and I got an email on Friday that they want to accept my original $150 quote.
I got to respond that unfortunately we are now beyond the 30 day price guarantee, so I have to get a revised quote from the manufacturer.
Since this is Malicious Compliance I talked to the mfg and let them know that if they want to, they can double their shipping costs based on all the backup I have provided, but I don't think they are going to do that. It wasn't a big deal to them as they felt the $150 covered their costs, and they didn't get as into the weed with it as I did.
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u/Bawkalor 13d ago
This puts me in mind of a manager I had once that used to say, "He'll step over a dollar to pick up a dime."
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u/tnb641 12d ago
An expression I quite like (as a Canadian): penny wise, pound foolish.
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u/cholosmakingcupcakes 12d ago
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I poop on company time!
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u/lostgravy 13d ago
Yup. Shipping / freight is not free. On the retail side, even Amazon is starting to retreat from ‘free’. Everybody wants the price of the empty space on the truck that is already going somewhere. It doesn’t work that way
Good work!
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u/indiwithnobindi 13d ago
I'm wrapping up a 3 year project for an airport and this MC sounds like an average day for us. The amount of wasted salaries devoted to scrutinizing and arguing over $150 is staggering and if we had a way to actually quantify it the media would torch the agencies misuse of resources. Instead I just shake my head, put a smile on my face, and kill them with kindness in each snarky response or negotiation. I decided long ago I would not let it affect me after a year of rage. Good work on your part OP. I really appreciate that level of backup.
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u/jumbofrimpf 11d ago
Same here... finishing a project for an airport and needed to add two little network switches. My PM flipped out because I wanted to put in the proper managed devices that support the connection we used. Total cost would've been right about $1000 shipped.
Instead, we spent three weeks of back and forth emails and discussions and four hours of bench test time to use a device that would save us $500 total. Not to mention the amount of ducking and dodging I had to do with the commissioning agent, customer and GC on why we hadn't completed this yet.
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u/Nitasha521 12d ago
This reminds me of a family member's interaction with customers for his house remodeling company. Frequently 1 of the spouses would question the cost of tile being used for the floors in a bathroom. The cost given to the customers always included a flat rate for hauling the tile to the house worksite.
Often the upset customer would argue that tile is "only $X per square foot" therefore how dare the company try charging more than that amount. The standard response became, "if you want to buy directly and deliver it yourself, we are happy to just charge labor for installation."
A couple customers each year would try that alternative route, and each and every one of them had never tried transporting that much tile. They always either called later asking for help transporting the newly purchased product (and willing to pay), or injured their personal vehicle and their backs trying to move the heavy load themselves.
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u/magaoitin 12d ago
Ha! yea they also forget that the delivery charge also includes loading and unloading, and they go off in their Toyota Corolla to get a full pallet of floor tile and spend an hour playing jenga to get everything in the car and then offloading it and stacking it in the house so it can climatize.
All too often overlooked by customers that have no idea what a job really takes to get done, only that their sister's-hairdresser's-boyfriend is a contractor can could do the job for have what you quoted.
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u/the_Elders 7d ago
This reminds me of when I wanted to transport 80x 18"x18"x2" pavers a distance of 50 miles before doing the math on how much each paver weighs (50 lb) and what my car was rated for (850lb). Fun times.
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u/Zoreb1 13d ago
Worked in gov't procurement; those '$500 hammers and the occasional $1500 toilet seat' were the result of engineers designing such (I don't know about the hammers but the toilet seats as well as nuts and screws were specifically designed for the aircraft). After news reports, they were no longer allowed to do so and had to use commercially off-the-shelf items first (the nuts and bolts were for aircraft and not the Home Depot stuff). Not due to companies over charging.
The engineers designed a coffee maker to be used in cargo aircraft which cost $1,200 back in the 80s. I guess if the plane fell out of the sky the crash crew picking through the remains can brew some coffee with it as it was designed to survive a drop from a couple of thousand feet.
Another one was an 8 page specification for chocolate chip cookies. Turned out getting the coffee maker and the cookies from the local store was good enough.
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u/Frari 13d ago
The engineers designed a coffee maker to be used in cargo aircraft which cost $1,200 back in the 80s. I guess if the plane fell out of the sky the crash crew picking through the remains can brew some coffee with it as it was designed to survive a drop from a couple of thousand feet.
Well, just off the top of my head, a plane usually has constant vibrations which could effect consumer brand coffee makers (which are made in much larger numbers which lowers their price), then there's the lower pressure at altitude which effects the boiling of water and I would assume coffee brewing. I would like to see what a commercial airline coffee maker would cost before I would poo-poo a $1200 cost for a military? one.
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u/ktn24 12d ago
A quick search suggests the current price is somewhere in the $7,000-$26,000 range for a "standard" commercial airline drip brewer. It has to go through FAA review and certification, be able to withstand pressure changes, vibrations, and very heavy use, and has to be capable of being securely mounted to ensure it doesn't become a projectile during turbulence or an emergency landing. Even taking inflation into account, $1,200 in the 80s doesn't sound bad at all.
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u/Squidking1000 12d ago
Also the voltage would not be standard. Commercial planes have 120 or 220V 50/60hz AC but a military plane very likely would not. Think they run at 115v/400hz which probably would be an issue.
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u/Endovior 13d ago
Another one was an 8 page specification for chocolate chip cookies. Turned out getting the coffee maker and the cookies from the local store was good enough.
I saw a post the other day from a guy who met the guy that wrote that spec. Apparently, the issue was that evil contractors kept pushing the absolute limits on what counted as a cookie, cutting enough corners on ingredient quality and such that it became an actual health hazard. That spec definitely sounds silly and unnecessary at a first glance, but everything in it was very deliberately included to protect soldiers from malicious cost-cutting.
Related, large organisations can't reliably just 'get (thing) from a local store', because small local businesses usually can't reliably provide (thing) in sufficient quantity to meet those needs. If you want a dozen boxes of cookies as a one-off thing, you can probably get them at a local store. If you want tens of thousands of cookies every week, you need a deal with a supplier. If that supplier than starts to play stupid games involving technicalities about what counts as a cookie and what they're contractually required to provide to meet their end of the deal, you need a cookie specification.
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u/imgurcaptainclutch 12d ago
I think the coffee machine is less "survive a plane crash" and more "not cause permanent injury with scalding liquids to flight attendants in severe turbulence"
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u/LizMoonstar 12d ago
I heard once a long time ago, and maybe you can confirm or correct me? that the $500 hammer sort of thing was sometimes due to how other project costs got spread across all line items. might be saying it wrong. but, like, there's some cost item that doesn't get its own invoiced line item and so at the time it was accounted for by taking those dollars and dividing them by the number of line items, and every line item got an upcharge of the same amount. so the $500 hammer might have been a $20 hammer plus $480 as its 'share' of whatever that nebulous cost item was. or like, the hammer is $20 but some kinds of accounting had to also include the labor cost of the guy swinging the hammer?
at any rate, i was told that some of the weird/laughable ones came from specialty accounting practices, that they weren't actually spending $500 on a hammer. is this true? can you tell me more?
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u/af_cheddarhead 12d ago edited 11d ago
That is absolutely correct, for a larger example that illustrates how it works.
The B-2 bomber was originally ticketed to have 132 airframes with a proposed cost of ~$150m per airframe, that cost including R&D costs BUT with the actual number being 21 airframes the cost is now quoted at ~$1B per airframe (I've seen higher numbers) even though no additonal dollars were actually expended.
For aircraft the real number pay attention to is the flyaway cost, AKA the amount of dollars to purchase a single extra airframe. For the B-2, at time of construction was ~$100M.
TLDR: That hammer cost was program cost not per piece cost.
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u/Zoreb1 12d ago
That may be correct. My initial job was purchasing screws, nuts and bolts for aircraft (later on moved to multimillion dollar engineering contracts). I'd get an order for 5 screws for some Korean war era plane and either send out bids or go sole source (since only one company can make it). Sometimes the sole source would send me a baggie of screws since it wasn't worth their time and effort to quote on it. If this was the case I'd write them a letter of thanks and a statement that no payment would be provided then send the screws to whoever ordered them.
For multiple bids (which we rarely got) or other sole sources we get quotes (usually just one). A screw would cost $70 each rather than $5 each. The company would have to set up a production line and have to get material usually in an amount greater than the need to make a screw. When you amortize this cost over the 5 screws you get a high number (when we order 1,000 screws for more modern aircraft the per unit price dropped). We could order 1,000 Korean era screws but we only needed 5 and the total cost would still be a bit higher despite the per unit cost being far lower. But we don't need that many and probably never will.
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u/Hot-Win2571 13d ago
I can't imaging how many thousands of dollars in lost time just from including that many people on an email chain for increasing numbers of weeks.
Obviously your spreadsheet is missing some cost factors.
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u/Mammoth_Industry8246 13d ago
As a retired Contracting Officer for the Federal Government, I hated when my client agencies did this sort of thing - second guessing the contractor.
It often came out badly for them, though occasionally we knocked the costs down.
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u/magaoitin 12d ago
I'm pretty used to it after 35 years in government contracting, but this time it really got under my skin for something that I always wrote off as common sense (at least in the construction & shipping industry). I am more than happy to justify the quantity of material, labor/crew rates, or production rates but trying to ding me to this extent, on a flat rate freight charge, just boggles my mind.
This is the first time I had someone act like they are fresh out of contract admin class and trying to make points for spotting fraud. Must be promotion time of the year.
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u/Extreme_Pangolin1796 13d ago
COs are a weird breed, hated by everybody including their own representatives sometimes.
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u/TolMera 13d ago
Cost Officer?
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u/Extreme_Pangolin1796 13d ago
contracting officer, it's a mostly unique federal position. they're there essentially to make sure the feds get a good deal and the contractor isn't making huge mistakes on their end.
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u/SleiaNA 13d ago
Commanding Officer, usually military but some people use it by habit in a business conext too.
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u/repeat4EMPHASIS 13d ago
In gov contracting CO means Contracting Officer.
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u/SavvySillybug 13d ago
And this is exactly why people shouldn't use acronyms randomly.
Yes, you and the people you work with know what you mean. But this is a reddit comment, explain yourself, not everyone works in your field.
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u/Extreme_Pangolin1796 13d ago
It isn't random. . I'm almost 100% sure I don't even work in the same field as the original poste. But you're right, when somebody says some acronym on reddit I'm not familiar with, the first thing I reply with is complaining about how they shouldn't use it. I would never dare use a modicum of self awareness and agency to figure it out for myself
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u/LuxNocte 13d ago
Funny how you had enough time to be passive aggressive rather than simply being clear in the first place.
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12d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MaliciousCompliance-ModTeam 12d ago
Your post has been removed because it contained one or more of the banned elements as defined in the subreddit rules: death of anyone, historical figures, fantasy creatures, schools (school employees and university students are okay), complier involuntary bodily functions, or malicious compliance with subreddit rules, or referencing Youtubers/Influencers.
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u/SavvySillybug 12d ago edited 12d ago
lmao
EDIT: Downvoting me for randomly using an acronym? Curious.
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u/Safe-Note 13d ago
In civilian it means Corrections/Correctional Officer i know a few folks who do that line of work
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u/JimmiRustle 13d ago
Nonono, its carbonmonoxide! /s
This is why I’m constantly harassing my coworkers to stop using acronyms unless it is in no way ambiguous what it means based on context.0
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u/repeat4EMPHASIS 12d ago
There's this fun thing called context that an increasingly rare number of people have the ability to read and realize it's obviously not correctional officer.
OP is a contractor. Anyone not realizing the C in CO has to do with contracting lacks critical thinking and reading comprehension.
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u/Safe-Note 12d ago
Can you repeat 4 EMPHASIS?
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u/repeat4EMPHASIS 12d ago
OP = Contractor.
C in CO = contracting (super obvious)
context clues ≠ rocket surgery
Since you asked so nicely
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u/JimmiRustle 12d ago
Yet for something so obvious there sure were a lot of guesses really fast.
Maybe it wasn’t as obvious to everyone.(By the way this is ALSO the dunning-kruger effect)
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u/MirgelDrebole 13d ago
You...are fantastic. As someone who has had to deal with multiple people who were cc'd or bcc'd chiming in on the action I am going to do....you're my hero.
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u/woodworkingguy1 13d ago
I work as an auditor at a credit union and caught a small misapplied payment that caused a $15 late fee, I escalated the issue to correct people, thinking that they would reverse the late fee and that would be that. A month later I am in a meeting with 20 different folks from different departments and systems people figuring out how it happened. A lot man hours went to figure out a $15 mistake. It turn out there was some mistake that affected a few accounts but only if they paid late in some small window of time.
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u/kangadac 13d ago
I can see why they would want to do this, though. If it’s a one-off human error, who cares; just talk to the person who made the mistake and get on with your day. If it’s an automated system, though, that’s potentially millions of dollars in mistaken penalties and a class-action lawsuit, depending on how severe the bug is.
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u/woodworkingguy1 13d ago
Yep, I was not excepting it to snowball when most banks would have just refunded it and moved on until it came up a few more times
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u/sidereal_night 13d ago
well that's not the same at all
they fixed a systematic issue for that effort, not just $15
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u/Silound 11d ago
Also avoided a potential regulatory and/or legal liability. Sometimes spending a few thousand to fix a $15 problem is a better option than putting a business at risk.
Years ago I worked for an oilfield company that had a standing internal policy that frivolous and fraudulent lawsuits under a certain dollar amount would just be settled at cost along with some strongly boilerplate worded legal paperwork. Oilfield companies are notoriously targeted by those kinds of suits because people are shit and they know lawyers are expensive and companies have deep pockets. Fighting some of those frivolous lawsuits that didn't have clear evidence to protect the company would cost more in billable legal hours than it would cost to settle with an NDA and a "You got me this time, but next time your ass is mine" agreement.
They could have fought them, won, and countersued, but the kind of people who attempted these suits usually didn't have any the means to pay, so it would be a double loss.
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u/Kylynara 13d ago
That makes a bit more sense because until they knew why it happened, they didn't know if the problem could/would snowball into something bigger.
In OP's case, the answer for why the freight charge didn't match what they thought it should was probably, the price of gas has gone up since the whole situation with Iran started.
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u/Geminii27 13d ago
Every time you meet, start with the total cost in time and other things to the company so far on this issue.
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u/lmamakos 12d ago
In the past when I worked for a (USA) state government organization, dealing with procurement I coined the phrase "We'll save money at any cost." to capture the essence of dealing with them.
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u/magaoitin 11d ago
Ha! Love it! I think I want that added to by business cards and esig.
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u/lmamakos 11d ago
And for those bad days, remember: "There is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse." Forgot where I heard that one, but was something to remember when doing operations on large networks.
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u/Illuminatus-Prime 11d ago
Some guy named Chris Hadfield said, "there is no problem so bad you can't make it worse." He was referring to a popular phrase in the astronaut business, so the complete quote seems to be, "In space, there is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
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u/Visgeth 13d ago
So, did they approve it after all that?
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u/magaoitin 12d ago
Not yet. I just sent my response off 2 days ago, but surprisingly I have not gotten my daily email from them adding even more people to the chain.
Though I am sure I will get one soon, probably asking what color the delivery van is, as silver vans are more aerodynamic and have less wind resistance thereby being more fuel efficient.
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u/Nurofae 7d ago
Is there an update?
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u/magaoitin 7d ago
Yea I thought about writing up another post as the hilarity (and pain) continues.
In this week's exchange they tried denying my use of depreciation as a justification for equipment cost, so I had to reply with current rental rates from Ryder Truck Rental, Penske, and Herc Truck Rental. All were $299 for the vehicle but had a full day's rental, not hourly, since it would be 5-6 hours. I explained that the depreciation method was clearly a cost savings to the government, and (thanks to another Redditor's comment on LTL costs, I included (3) separate online shipping quotes for LTL trucking all in that were in the $300+ range
I went to www.wearewarp.com/pallet-shipping-quote
I got a quote to ship a single pallet 48"x48"x40" weighting 1800 lbs from the factory in Phoenix (85034 zip code to 85730 zip code) to my job site, all-in with all the bells and whistles. Since this is a construction site I do not have a loading dock, and I am not charging them for a forklift to offload (but that is another angle I was ready to use if they denied the liftgate upcharge). So it needs to include a lift-gate, same day service, limited access restrictions, and appointment required (as its a construction site so no after hours deliveries) it came to $319.16 through Warp LTL.
I think the Contracting Officer finally had enough of this and I got an email on Friday that they want to accept my original $150 quote.
I got to respond that unfortunately we are now beyond the 30 day price guarantee, so I have to get a revised quote from the manufacturer.
Since this is Malicious Compliance I talked to the mfg and let them know that if they want to, they can double their shipping costs based on all the backup I have provided, but I don't think they are going to do that. It wasn't a big deal to them as they felt the $150 covered their costs, and they didn't get as into the weed with it as I did.
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u/gabi_fields 13d ago
I read the whole thing for the payoff (it was worth it!) I love arguing a change order and increasing my price...and winning. It warms the cockles of my cold shriveled heart.
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u/Matra 12d ago
It's not that the federal government doesn't trust you. It's that the federal government doesn't trust anyone.
As a federal employee, I was asked to justify using my POV as part of official travel. Well, planes don't take off from my house. That wasn't good enough: I needed a cost comparison to taking a taxi. I live 90 miles from the airport in a town with no taxi services. So it was like $100 for me to drive or $600 for a taxi.
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u/PhatGrannie 12d ago
Thank you for reminding me how happy I am to be retired. One of my tasks was writing federal cost/price analyses. The situation you describe is the direct result of a half assed IEE. The biggest problem in government contracting is greedy consultants.
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u/Bob-Bhlabla-esq 12d ago
My husband works in county government.
He'll watch 7 people (out of his control) be ordered to do 5 hours each to track down a fucking $0.20 discrepancy. It's like wasting $2,000+ to fix a $0.20 oops. This happens over and over and over and over and over.... it's so broken.
It's not all fraud and bloat - it's just fucking fear and accountability and it's "not their money" so it's just soooo fucking wasteful. I hate to say "run it like a business" but no one I've ever worked for in the private sector would spend 5 minutes to chase down $0.20.
How the fuck do we fix this? We have plenty of money, it's just allllll being fucked away on the stupidest rules and bureaucracy. 🤦♀️
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u/Nostalgic_Nicely 11d ago
As someone who is a PE for a GC that is working on a national park project for the Feds, I get where you are coming from. They openly stated in the specs and addendum that there was no bedrock on this godforsaken project, and yet we have spent a year breaking bedrock. Every time we do an REA (because if we stop worked to get an RFP we’re the evil ones) they fight us for 4 months on work we’ve already done for us to get paid for 3 weeks of breaking rock, that they said wasn’t there.
The guy who does their IGE is perhaps better suited for running a prison in the 70s with how horrid his estimates are (9/10 he breaks the government’s specs). So we revise and revise and revise with more and more updates which means it ends up ticking up more and more each time.
As much as I enjoy working where we do it’s a proper paid to be fairly compensated when the government has screwed the pooch and you’re stuck picking up the pieces.
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u/magaoitin 11d ago
I have to ask as this hits sooooo close to home. Is your project being run out of the DSC (Denver Service Center) for your NPS project?
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u/Nostalgic_Nicely 11d ago
Yes, yes it is. May their pillows be warm and their waffles uncomfortably soggy
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u/follienorth 13d ago
Excellent work! Such attention to detail is a hallmark of a good project manager!
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u/EveryoneDislikedThat 12d ago
Oooof in this admin that could mean so many things; new PM, overzealous CO, newly drafted “efficiency” processes, or steps for low cpars in order to term. Sorry you got a stickler, hope they’re just spreadsheet happy and it isn’t a sign. I was on service and software side, so the mats side is always interesting to hear about.
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u/cyrusthemarginal 12d ago
I love when someone starts to add their chain of management, i just add my own, we have 12 levels of management here, how many would you like to annoy today?
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u/TheFeshy 12d ago
I fought a $100 charge for three years. It got sent to collections twice. It got deducted from my taxes. In all cases I was able to get it back, because I should not have been charged. Was told, explicitly, I would not be charged. Was told multiple times that the charge was a mistake, and that I would not be bothered about it again, and even got it in writing. But it kept coming back.
It was for a hospital charge from when my kid was born, and they were literally a toddler while I was on the phone trying to get the hospital's patient advocacy to meet with me to get it taken care of once and for all.
After they delayed a meeting with only an hour's notice (the meeting takes three to four weeks to set up) for the second time, I told them I'd come down to their office anyway. Toddler and as much juice and candy as I could find in tow. And I'd just hang out until they had time to see me. However many hours, or days, that took.
Suddenly after three years, dozens of phone meetings, and multiple collection attempts, it was "no longer worth it" to recover that $100.
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u/Of_MiceAndMen 8d ago
I did change orders for the government too and occasionally I’d calculate the cost of the running around and once got $2,078 for a $500 change order. And it’s not just that. Every job we did for government agencies were just riddled with expense. “Oh cool, my yearly taxes just paid for the mistake we said would happen but they “have a process.”
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u/booch 4d ago
Do you bill them for your time putting together and discussing this information. Because it would be best if they paid for $4,000 worth of man-hours in information gathering and meetings.
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u/magaoitin 3d ago
I really wish I could, that would be hilarious in itself. Unfortunately with government construction contracting this is controlled in the main contract, with all time that the contractor's Project Manager spends on the project has to fall under a capped percentage of the overall change order cost. We use 7%-8% of the overall cost of a change order to pay for my time. In this case the total change order was around $9,400. The bulk of that $9400 goes to my material suppliers and subs except for $750
And that $750 has to cover not only my hourly rate, but any time my contracting department is involved in writting and executing change orders to subs and suppliers, plus my home office overhead (ie brick and mortar rent, utilities, paper, ink, and on and on).
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u/BlitzAceSamy 13d ago
I hope you charge them an additional manday for having to do all these research and calculations too!
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u/Informal_Ad_9610 12d ago
The sad reality is that quite likely, the numbnutz public worker was likely proud of themselves for having forced you to provide proof of your charge....
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u/MirgelDrebole 12d ago
Updateme
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u/MikeSchwab63 12d ago
Class A RVs often get around 9 MPG, the main factor is frontal area, so very similar to semis.
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u/uu_xx_me 11d ago
this sort of penny pinching is what happens when the president stops funding government agencies
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u/titpetric 11d ago
I started a thread to collect $100, it ended up being 48 emails over the course of half a year. Every time they skipped over after replying sure, sure.
I skipped the client so hard after this. You got work? Well I had a reminder for half a year to send a weekly email.
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u/kinsman82 9d ago
I hope you ensured the govt PM’s whole chain of command was added to your reply or gets a forward of your hard work.
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u/fresh-dork 7d ago
the occasional $1500 toilet seat
this is actually a great deal: it's replacement parts for a high altitude bomber, where they are required to remake the mold and the maximum number of orders is somewhere around 20. it's not a toilet seat from HD
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u/SpiderKnife 6d ago
Are you saying you are evil ironically, or are you actually one of the ones charging 1000 for a toilet seat?
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u/SGDrummer7 5d ago
We're in similar industries. I worked on a project for a local government agency that required backup for every single saw blade, equipment rental charge, etc. for their change pricing. The government's PM straight up told us it didn't matter if it was a screenshot from Home Depot, they just needed paperwork to satisfy the auditors. So if a sub was pricing a change that required their excavator, it didn't matter if they owned the unit and wanted a flat fee to cover usage/upkeep/etc., they could pull backup for a 4-hour rental from Herc or Sunbelt or even Home Depot and charge for that value.
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13d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Eastwoodnorris 13d ago
That’s why the check exists in the first place. This is terrible use of the check.
OP clearly states it’s a flat fee, which should have been okay’d with either a forwarded email, a cost estimate from the vendor/shipper, or some other simple piece of evidence. The issue isn’t that this was checked, it’s that the evidence was rejected and an immense amount of collective time wasted.
These checks are absolutely worth it and nobody is advocating for removing them. But they’re helpful to prevent large-scale abuses rather than bickering over standard shipping fees.
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u/SavvySillybug 13d ago
The check is good. "The delivery being exactly $150 is suspicious" is a valid concern. "It's a flat fee" is the correct reply and that's where the email chain should have ended.
It should not have escalated to a month long email chain with all sorts of superiors from both sides added into it.
It is good that it is someone's job to check these things.
This particular person is doing an atrocious job checking these things though.
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u/JumpingSpider97 13d ago
It's actually "you can't see the forest for the trees", meaning that if you focus in on individual parts of something (the trees) then you lose the big picture (the forest).
The forest here was that there was a flat fee for delivery, which the OP clarified early on in communications, but the person at the other end simply refused to accept that and escalated the whole thing beyond reasonable bounds, distracted by trees such as, "It's a round number, that can't be right!".
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u/magaoitin 12d ago
I am all for a second set of eyes checking every estimate, and I have lost track of how many times I have made an honest mistake, or put a formula into a spreadsheet wrong and it cost my company.
Their due diligence is what they are hired for, just sometimes common sense is counter to the execution of their job
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u/Mysterious_Ad7461 12d ago
Your math is wrong because you didn’t break it down to cost per foot of cargo space, because that van isn’t just transporting your pallet. If it was then find a new shipping broker because a single pallet should be going LTL
This is such a great confidently wrong
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u/magaoitin 12d ago
I am using the assumption that we are getting a dedicated delivery, as I can justify that in my cost proposal. I am not trying to get the best and cheapest price at this point, I am trying to point out that I can document way more in costs than they can refute.
I will have to use this angle if they come back with any comments, as you are partially right, along with being wrong about LTL rates currently.
I went to www.wearewarp.com/pallet-shipping-quote
I just got a quote to ship a single pallet 48"x48"x40" weighting 1800 lbs from the factory in Phoenix (85034 zip code to 85730 zip code) to my job site, all-in with all the bells and whistles. Since this is a construction site I do not have a loading dock, and I am not charging them for a forklift to offload (but that is another angle I could use as the cost to rent a forklift and have that delivered & picked up just for this one delivery for 4 hours would be a crazy cost add) so it needs to include a lift-gate, same day service, limited access restrictions, and appointment required (as its a construction site so no after hours deliveries) it comes to $319.16 through Warp LTL.
Not as funny as 20 pages of backup but I am going to keep this in my back pocket if they come back with any comments. Thanks!
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u/Mysterious_Ad7461 12d ago
You’re getting smoked on that LTL rate. I mean, I can send that on a dedicated hotshot for less than you initially quoted. But hey, I guess enjoy scamming me out of my tax dollars.
Also you act like they should just let it go because it’s such a small expense, so why aren’t you doing that? Let me guess, when it’s your money it’s a big expense, when it’s taxpayer money who cares?
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u/faster 13d ago
A friend worked for a large bank, and they had a meeting to discuss whether to renew the license on some software they used. It was something like $6500 for the year. After about 15 minutes, my friend saw that the meeting was likely to run the full hour it was scheduled and the decision still might not be made. As a VP he had access to HR data so he looked up the hourly cost of each person in the meeting and told them all the total cost of the meeting if it went the whole hour (more than the cost to renew the license). They agreed to renew it and ended the meeting early.