Advice sought on being mucked around by company

johnisworried

Hi guys/gals,

Hoping some advice could be offered on the following situation, as I want to take this company to Court.

January last year I finished a contract with a company with whom I’d freelanced for three times before. Each contract was longer and better paid than the previous one. As the end of this contract they gave me a bonus, and sent a letter stating they hoped I would tender for contracts with them in the future. Another freelance I know was not paid in full, and told in a letter from the company his pay was docked for failing to fulfil the contract, and he would not be welcome back.

I found out about a lucrative gig with this same company in February whilst travelling abroad. I contacted them and was told I could apply. I sacrificed my already purchased flight home and bought a new one. Then my contact at the company told me I COULD NOT interview as someone at the company had stated they didn’t like me.

I was not happy. I went to the manager of the company who reviewed it. This took three weeks, with me in limbo abroad, not knowing which ticket was going to be used to get home. I was then told that the company had reconsidered and I could tender.

I returned home, and three weeks after the above change of mind, when I had been concentrating my energies on securing this new tender and not looking for other work, I was told AGAIN I could not tender, as a staff member at the company stated they did not want me there.

So basically, I sacrificed a plane ticket worth £300 after buying a new one, I could have changed my plans and spent four more weeks travelling, as was my original plan, had they not changed their mind and told me I could apply, the second time, and I wasted three weeks preparing a tender which was of no use to anyone.

Can I take this company to Court for wasting my time? I’m thinking it is breaking of a verbal/written contract in withdrawing the invitation to tender, and it is negligence on their part.

What do you think?

ILW

You are self employed, no rights beyond your contract.

phill99

Don't hold your breath on this one.

orangeslimes

It sounds like they have treated you badly, but I can't see how you have a case to take them to court.

ValHaller

johnisworried wrote: »

Can I take this company to Court for wasting my time? I’m thinking it is breaking of a verbal/written contract in withdrawing the invitation to tender, and it is negligence on their part.

Of course you can take them to court. But what I suspect you really want to know is whether your prospects for winning are good.

Tendering is part of precontract negotiations. As such tendering is not covered by any contract - unless you have already negotiated payment for your efforts in tendering. It strikes me that if you are going to freelance, you really need to get a thorough grounding in what constitutes a contract.

johnisworried

So contracts aside, can I claim damages for the wasting of my time and cash through their negligence?

ILW

johnisworried wrote: »

So contracts aside, can I claim damages for the wasting of my time and cash through their negligence?

No, as there is no contract. If you chose to do something voluntarily, that is your lookout.

ValHaller

Yes, you can claim damages for the wasting of your time and cash. If you claim on negligence, you are likely to find the case is struck out fairly early on, because a quick look at the case indicates that the company have no duty of care towards you - meaning that you would probably lose on a summary ruling - you would not even get to argue that there was negligence, because even if there was, the law would say that as the company had no duty of care, they were within their rights to neglect you.

You would get further with a case based on malice in that if you could prove that there was malice, you would be entitled to claim damages. This would avoid a summary ruling against you and allow you to have a shot at proving malice. But if the company defended by saying it was actually neglect, you would have a huge mountain to climb to prove it was malice.

Overall, while you could claim, your chances of winning would be minuscule.

CFC

ILW wrote: »

No, as there is no contract. If you chose to do something voluntarily, that is your lookout.

This.
Don't waste your effort and cash.
Your effort would be far better placed on finding out what one of the decision makers has against you and trying to rectify that relationship if possible, if you ever want a contract there again.

Pennywise

This kind of thing is part and parcel of being in business/self employed. That's why freelancer pay is usually a lot more than employee pay - to compensate/cover for the "costs" of running a business. It's just risk versus reward etc.

I'd be very rich indeed if I could claim my costs back from potential clients who've messed me around over the years. Lost count of the number of times I've driven miles to meet a potential new client, only to find they've forgotten and weren't there, or tyre-kickers just wanting freebie advice, etc.

Unless there is some kind of contract in place, even verbal, where they agree to pay your costs for tendering, then you've not a snowballs in hells chance of getting any recompense.

That's all part of being in business I'm afraid. Rather than wasting time, money and effort, you need to spend your time wisely in moving forward, either with this client, as said above, to find out who is the problem and try to solve it, or to learn from this and not make the same mistake again in the future.