uncooperative Vendors

[BKtechie]

Hi all,
I'm looking for ways to deal with an uncooperative Vendor. As part of our agreement, we are to recieve all source code for all programs done by this Vendor. As of late, the response time from her is about one week to return a call or reply to an e-mail, very bad and unprofessional. We have been waiting up to 4 months for some of the updated code. This is starting to make my life hard in the company, trying to troubleshoot this software and write updates. Any suggestions besides copying my boss on all e-mails, and documenting the trouble I'm having, as I'm doing now?
Thanks in advance,
BKtechie

 

[sleipnir214]

As far as I know, the standard escalation procedure is:

1. Phone calls and/or emails
2. Face-to-face meeting
3. Mailed letter.
4. Certified letter
5. Certified letter from your attorney
6. Lawsuit

First of all, talk with your legal representation. Make sure that you understand every part of the contract, specifically paying attention to any weak areas of the contract. Know exactly what the contract does and does not say, as opposed to what you assume it does and does not say. You may be interpreting the contract one way and your vendor another.

Have your attorney help you devise a strategy for resolving the matter. She may advise you to take something similar to the first 4 steps above before she gets directly involved, and give you some standard boilerplate to help you along

You're going to have to get in and stay in the vendor's person's face, but do it professionally. There may be non-performance penalties or specific situations which are considered breach of contract which you can use as a stimulus. But if the contract was not written well and not reviewed by your lawyers, you might have based your project on a document that does not require anything specific out of the vendor. If so, your options are limited. ______________________________________________________________________

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

Just remember that everyone is busy these days. With layoffs and such. So taking a week is not a big deal. Four months on the other hand.... Mike Wills
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer

http://www.koldark.net

 

[BKtechie]

Thanks guys,
I'm going to try to get my hands on that contract to start reviewing it, if they even bothered to draft one. I have a feeling that this was a word of mouth contract, and will be very hard to prove in court. My boss is finally going to get involved tomorrow (about time). We'll see what happens from here.
BKtechie

 

[cian]

Hi,

I have to deal with this regularly but in a different business. I disagree with the post that 1 week is reasonable. 24 hours is reasonable. After that get angry!

What i'd do: send a stern but clear email outlining the issues as you see them. Demand immediate action to resolve these issues. Copy your boss and their boss.
If you don't get a satisfactory response go straight to their boss highlighting your "serious concerns" at the handling of your account.
Next stage I would say is a personal visit with your boss where you can meet face to face and can once again express your concerns.
Normally you wouldn't need to go beyond this. If you do then you are dealing with a bunch of cowboys so take your business elsewhere.

Do not make the mistake of trying to take all this upon yourself, unless you are for example a sullpier manager or something. If you are in a some-what junior position I would definitly inform more senior people of the problems and your attempts to solve them. Bring in the big guns when you need them.

Isn't "concerns" an excellent word?



::

http://www.endamcg.com

 

[cian]

sullpier should have said supplier! My typing fingers(2) went a little out of control!



::

http://www.endamcg.com

 

[sleipnir214]

BKtechie,

It has been said that an oral contract isn't worth the paper it's written on. ______________________________________________________________________

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!

 

[sakaiza]

Hi all,

Just tell us whta 's the problem ?
Maybe we can help.
If you wish build a forum around, integrating you vendor if you want.

In this case, for you, it's tbest practice.

Regards

 

[BKtechie]

Thankyou all for your input into the situation. Apparently, it was an issue of control over the software development. We did not have a procedure for updating code. It was assumed that all code would be written by the Vendor. When I was hired, that changed, but none of the previous policies. After much coaxing, I finally got the source to produce the updates I needed. We shall see about the rest of the code.

The information regaurding the proper setup of contracts will be very useful to me in the future.

Sakaiza, our vendor programs in dBase 5, and I frequent that forum often. The problem that I was having was getting the source code for programs. That's what we get for dealing with a "beltway bandit."