Our office manager figured she'd hire a local electronic waste handler to come pick up a pallet of old servers and computers.
They charged us $1.60 per pound, which came to under $500.
While they were there for the pickup, she handed them a few extra boxes of failed plastic chips (IC's) that needed disposal. That added 24 pounds to the load. She requested that they be "destroyed", as opposed to just disposed of.
The electronic waste company emailed her, confirming that she wanted the chips "destroyed". She said yes, go ahead. No mention of cost was made.
There were about 12,000 chips. Their sizes averaged the dimensions of your thumb nail. All together, they would fit within two shoe boxes. The average weight of these chips was 0.9g each.
Later, our office manager got a call from the waste company manager saying that she had a very large invoice going to us and would work to see if she could get it lowered for us.
They were planning on charging us $240,000, or $20 per chip! That's $10,000 per pound, or 6,250 times their usual rate.
Our office manager said she had no idea it would cost that much, and the lady from the waste company said they could get the invoice down to $40,000 to help us out.
When our office manager pushed back, the lady from the waste company only offered if we'd like to confirm the number of chips.
Obviously, this is an attempt to scam us out of a lot of money. We used to have a granulator machine in the building that would have ground all these chips to dust in about two minutes. Whatever they did couldn't be worth more than double their normal rate of $1.60 pound.
So, that's the setup.
Now, we get into the correspondence with their COO, whose name starts with "N" and sounds like "Dick". I'll just call him Dick.
Dick totally embodies the Jezebel spirit, which will be very familiar to many of us here on LDSFF, as we have sundry characters who play the same games as Dick, flippantly, choosing what part of the truth to acknowledge, while strategically feigning ignorance of the more weighty matters.
Here goes....
Our CEO requests a Zoom meeting with Dick.
Up to this point, Dick's correspondence has been full of "Have a great day!" kinds of pleasantries.
Dick responds to the Zoom request:
Our CEO:I am currently traveling and phone would be best. Is there a reason Zoom is necessary?
Dick:Yes, situation warrants face-to-face communication, on Zoom or in person. Please propose a time / date for a Zoom meeting. Thank you.
Our CEO:Situation? It’s an invoice. I’m sure a phone conversation will more than suffice.
Dick:Given the absence of a quote, and lack of approval of for such a large invoice, we will need to meet face to face to start to review the details. Thank you.
--another email--
Dick, the owner of our company considers this matter to be very serious. Given your desire not to meet on Zoom, you could connect us to the owner of [the waste company] to meet with us. We need to go to the top, on both ends, and retrace all of the details. Thank you
Send me the zoom invite.
Repeating the same sentiment regarding the estimate or invoice over and over again doesn’t make it any more of fact.
I do not wish to have my voice and/or face recorded during this zoom meeting. Also, please make sure you read our security disclaimer at the bottom of my email signature.
Thank you.
[disclaimer at the bottom of Dick's email]
Caution: This email message, including all content and attachments, is both proprietary and CONFIDENTIAL. The information contained in this email message is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you have received this document in error. Any further review, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by reply email and delete it. Thank you.
Can you spot the many Troll behaviors Dick exhibited as he tried to scam his customer out of a lot of money? It started with the waste company's manager pretending that it should be satisfactory to let us 'confirm the number of chips' they were given.
Sheesh! This kind of stuff can take time off a person's life. These kinds of people are so draining to encounter.