Forum Post: FYI : This is how corporations treated my small business during the collapse years:
Posted 12 years ago on Jan. 31, 2012, 11:21 a.m. EST by freewriterguy
(882)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Qwest DEX yellow pages is a 7 billion dollar corporation and when I finally was awarded a contract in 2008, it took 4 months to finish the job, and I wasnt able to pay Qwest back by the sept. due date for my advertising that year, I could have gotten caught up next year cause i did have the money in oct. when i finally got paid but, now get this: even though I had already paid Qwest DEX Yellow Pages $60,000 in advertising in all the previous years, they deleted my small business from their book, this was in 2008 - 2009 the year of the collapse. If the world knew this was how corporations treated small business I wonder if it would outrage them. They didnt even have the courtesy to list my name and number as a single line entry, and to this day my business is no longer listed in the yellow pages. I knew then that the system was broken, and since then it has been coming to light to the rest of the world. It seems bankers only want to loan money to people who dont need it. (banks only wanted to give money to my mommy for the house i bought last year, even though they are almost dead, and im actually out working and created two jobs)
p.s. dont mention sba funding, cause its a myth unless you are part of the pyramid scheme that is destroying this country i couldnt afford a home to collateralize it 100% as required by the sba. I was financing my business and couldnt afford a home payment also.
Of course they ant your mum's house. That is the way these crooks work.
Why didn't you request earlier payment from your client so you could pay quest by sept?
well it might seem odd since i hadnt finished the job, and they had already given half down which i spent on parts and some operating expenses. u see the real world of business operate on a catch 22 principle, i had alot of businesses fishing for my products early that year, but due to the duns and bradstreet report that reported my business only having 16k credit available, I wasnt awarded the large 100k - 200k contracts possible due to them believing I wasnt able to finance the job, which wasnt true. I was living off of mommy and daddy loans (except in this year, due to the market being down, my funding had dried up), but d&b operates much like the 3 credit reporting agencies, they dont really care about small business, other than keeping them small. So I had to live on the jobs that paid 50% down, as the ones that didnt even give a deposit, didnt beleive I could actually accomplish them even though I had in the past.
The system is closed minded: Here is another example, I spent 1-2 weeks just doing paperwork with another corporation filling out "small business preferred" paperwork because some businesses get government assistance and it is required. well I was awarded a 76,000 contract from prax air, but they wouldnt give any deposit, and neither would any banks finance it, so i had to pass on the award. small business my ass, i bet they got the credit for awarding it, but it just goes down in their report back to the government "oh well we tried" cause no one gives a shit really.
another example in 2009 I was awarded a 30,000 federal job with the job corps from stimulus money, now listen to this buracracy b.s. I was trying to pull 45k out of an ira to finance it, (because i had to pay them 150% of the job to guarantee fulfillment of the contract once awarded) but the penalty for early withdraw was going to be over 10k on the full amount of the ira, because even though i could have completed the job within the two months turn around for redepositing the funds back into the ira, I knew I wasnt going to get paid within the 60 days, so the penalty from the government of an early withdraw from an ira was more than the profit on the job, so instead I ended up laying off my last employee and that became the 3rd contract I was awarded but had to pass on.
you could have figured out how to be done a month earlier so you could pay on time
or
you could have delayed the inital job, picked up another contract in the interim that would have also have some up front payment (for operating expenses) and used that to keep the advertising going.
I see you edited with a lot more info. It's simple cash flow - you have to get ahead. Not expect suppliers to fill the cash flow gap. Not what you wanted to hear, I am sure.