u/BhagavaanKeeMahima1

location: Iowa

We got contacted by a consulting company in late February of this year. They asked us to go to a large facility in a mid-sized town in Iowa and give an estimate for an office painting. We're a small painting company in the midwest. Been in business for five years. Everything (residential and corporate) has always worked out really well for us.

We go to the facility and take a LIDAR scan, receiving direction from the facility manager on what needs be included. He wants wall-guard in the common area in addition to painting. We ask him if he wants a copy of the estimate. He says yes. We did this because we wanted to make sure that everything he wanted on the estimate was there, and that anything he didn't want on there wasn't included. We write up the estimate and send it to both the facility manager and the consultant contact.

We get a read receipt on our invoice program from the facility manager immediately. Nothing from the consultant company. We eventually get contacted about the estimate by the consultant company. We find out that the lady who was our initial contact is no longer with the company (first red flag) and so we send it to someone else at the company.

A few days pass and we get an email from the facility manager asking why the price the consultant company sent him was $5800 higher than the one we sent him. Second red flag. Call him and tell him we have no idea. We get the job and are sent approval to move forward. We start the next day and work that Thursday and Friday painting the training room, two offices and an entryway. I inform the company that we normally charge our paint and hardward supplies and pay the bill at the end once we're paid, but that we would need a $2000 downpayment for the wall-guard supplies. Our new point of contact at the consultant company says no problem. We'll get a check sent to you.

We take the weekend off and start in the large bathrooms on Monday/Tuesday. On that Tuesday as we're finishing up, the facility manager tells us he wants us to move into the two large offices next. We inform him that he didn't have us scan those offices, and that they weren't on the estimate. He also wants extra wall-guard on two other walls. He wants us to drop his office because he thinks the price will be comparable. The offices are so much more involved than his office.

We contact our guy again and tell him there's a scope increase. He says to get him an estimate. We scan it that Tuesday and write up the add-ons and send it to him Wednesday morning. They need to submit a new order, but he says he'll get us approval within the hour. That was noon. We finish the common areas on Wednesday. Don't hear back from him. We're technically finished. Can't apply wall-guard until it arrives. Can't paint the extra two offices until approved. I wait Thursday and when I don't hear anything I contact the owner of the consulting company Friday morning. I hear nothing from them Friday or the weekend. The walls are half painted in the common area because the bottom is getting wall-guard. They've cleared out the offices for us to paint. They're wondering why we're not there.

I start bombarding the consulting company with phone calls early Monday morning. We go to do an interior job elsewhere. The consulting company is passing me around between their associates like a hot potato. They're cagey, nebulous, circumlocutory. They keep saying they're going to give me answers and don't call me back when they say they're going to call me. I get a new associate every time. The last one tells me they don't actually have authorization to send me a check. So did that guy lie to me?

I call the facility manager and say I will finish painting the half-painted walls and his office for free, because it looks like shit and I feel terrible, but we're going to have to drop the second work order and the wall-guard because we're booked until fall and we're now running into other scheduled projects. This is a company with an $88 billion dollar revenue btw.

The next day I'm finishing up the interior I started in the meanwhile. I get a call from the consulting company owner. He wires me the money for the wall-guard materials, gives me verbal approval to finish the painting and extra wall guard application. He also asks if I sent the original estimate to the facility manager. I said yes because we are very meticulous about our estimates and I was trying to avoid the imbroglio we were now in by making sure we were on the same page about the scope of the project. He tells me they have a lot of facilities they manage for this company, but not to ever do that again if we want to work with them in the future because "they don't really like us when they see our numbers."

We finish up the two offices on Thursday and Friday and order the wall-guard. A fun little anecdote about one of the rooms. One of the ladies who worked in that room decided to tell us that we only estimated part of the room, but she did so after the fact. I called her Miss Schadenfreude because she seemed to enjoy it. On the other side of a small sliding window in that room was "the rest of this room". There's no door that leads into that room from the room we estimated. The room was dark the day we estimated it. The only access to this room is from another part of the building to which we were never granted access. You think she could have mentioned that when we estimated it. Normally we would oblige, but I'm not going through another eleven day scope increase approval. The wall-guard is scheduled to be there at the beginning of the next week.

Over the weekend the owner of the consulting company asks me for the final invoice and starts interrogating me about the numbers. "Break it down for me like I'm a toddler...". So I did. What comes out in the course of our very long correspondence is that "verbal direction" from him is not the same as written authorization. I feel like he's trying to finagle me into work that he will later say I did of my own volition. So I tell him that if that's the case, he needs to give me written authorization for the scope increase before the weekend is over or I will either reject the wall-guard from the delivery driver, or drop it off at the facility and the remaining amount (since it was now $2500 with the additional wall-guard add-on) will be added to the invoice at the end and he can find some one else to finish it. He relents and gives me written authorization. Like he actually seemed irritated to give it to me.

The order comes late on Tuesday. We start Wednesday. The trim pieces I explicitly asked the lady about when ordering the guard, and that she told me would be included, are not in there. We apply the biggest pieces that don't need to be cut on the largest walls. The next day we're on a different interior job that we had scheduled a while back because we didn't expect these kinds of delays. Now burning the candle at both ends. We work Friday and screw up one of the pieces because while I was trying to clean the adhesive off another part of the wall, my girlfriend (the company owner) stuck a large piece to a wall and couldn't get it off. The problem was that the trim board at the bottom of the wall that we had been lining it up all across the room wasn't even on this wall and it was a fraction of an inch shorter at the top. It was 7:00 so we had to leave because that is when the last person leaves and we need clearance to be in the office.

I call the facility manager on Saturday morning and tell him we will fix everything, but that I would like him to submit the approval on the invoice because 1) they told me it would be net-30 and this is already three weeks over schedule and 2) to get this consulting company off my back because the stress is now affecting our performance. I promise to finish the remaining 56 square feet of wall guard, paint his office and order the trim. He says he'll call the consulting company. Like this guy just doesn't get it. They're not his friend. We work the weekend to catch-up and finish up our interior job on Monday. We get a call from the consulting company telling us the company doesn't want us to finish the wall-guard job. The consulting company gives us some sob story about how their company was sabotaged by the guy who said he would send a check and get us approval. I submit the final invoice that night per her request. Get a read receipt from her that night as well. Four days later she calls asking for it. Claims it was in the junk box. I never get a read receipt when she supposedly opens it that day. Three weeks later today I get an email saying they will pay us the painting cost minus the wallguard materials and labor, the $2000 downpayment, and the $3350 damage for the one wall. What should I do? Where have I been wrong? I've been steadily collecting emails, messages, phone logs, etc. for a week now because I've felt this coming for a while, and have been getting passed around the corporate phone tree because they're in the middle of company restructuring and because it's so difficult to get a damn person on the phone these days.

Here is the legal advice we were given. Is it sound?

This is a genuinely messy situation, but the person has a stronger position than they probably realize. Here’s the breakdown: What they should do right now The most important immediate step is sending a formal demand letter — not an email, a certified letter — to the consulting company owner specifically, itemizing every amount owed: painting labor, wall-guard materials, the $2,000 downpayment, and wall-guard labor. Explicitly state that you dispute the $3,350 damage claim and explain why (the wall trim discrepancy was a pre-existing condition they were never informed about, and you were working under time pressure imposed by their scheduling failures). Give them 14 days to pay in full or you’ll pursue legal action. Their legal position is actually solid • They have written authorization for the scope increase (they pushed for it and got it — smart) • They have read receipts on invoices • They have a paper trail of approval delays that directly caused the scheduling chaos • The verbal approval for the wall-guard was later confirmed in writing • The $3,350 damage claim is weak — a misaligned trim board is a facility condition issue, not contractor negligence, and the circumstances (7pm deadline, rushed finish) were caused by the client’s own delays Small claims vs. attorney Given the dollar amounts involved, small claims court is worth considering depending on their state’s limits (many go up to $10–15k now). An attorney sends a stronger signal, but the economics may not pencil out unless the total owed is substantial. Where they went wrong (honestly) Very little. Sending the estimate directly to the facility manager was the right call ethically but burned the relationship with the consultant — and now they know why the consultant didn’t want that. The consultant is marking up their work and doesn’t want the client seeing the underlying numbers. That $5,800 markup is almost certainly the core of the dysfunction here. The girlfriend piece on the wall-guard application is the only real operational mistake. The bigger picture That “don’t send estimates to the facility manager” comment from the owner is a confession. This consultant is running a pass-through markup scheme on a company with $88B in revenue. They’re protecting that margin. This person is being squeezed because they accidentally exposed it. That context matters if this ever goes legal. Document everything, send the demand letter, and don’t do any more work for this consulting company.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If this is not the sub for this kind of question, before the moderators remove this, would they please allow others to give me a suggestion for a better sub for this kind of question so I can submit it there? Not exactly sure where to find answers to this question. Thank you.