Agencies to Avoid

Virus_Inc

Chamberlin Scott (http://www.cscott.ie/) ... avoid working for this agency at all costs. They are a pack of useless turkeys in my opinion.

I started a job with through at the beginning of May this year and was informed I'd have to set up a limited company so they could pay me and that payments would take 4 weeks to get started and weekly from then on... No problems there.

However it took them 7 weeks before they actually *tried* to pay me for the first time, dispite my repeated requests for a payment date. I say *tried* because dispite me giving them a copy of a recent bank statement so they wouldn't fcuk up the account number they still managed to make a dogs breakfast out of it.

So still I waited with growing fustration as by this stage I'm living on rice & tomato sauce with rent, telephone, gas & electricity bills rapidly mounting (thank god for a sympathetic landlord otherwise I'd be the most well paid homeless person by now). Finally a payment comes through (only for my first week of work) and I rejoice by paying the rent for May then eagerly await the next weekly payment.... only it doesn't come.

Why? Because they said they were going to forward my timesheet through to my accountant to be invoiced (and silly me, I believed them) only they didn't. So with that sorted out surely I must get some money soon....

Nope. My contract had actually expired by this stage, but the boss decided to extended it, which was some good news amongst this whole mess. So I rang up the accountant to find out when the next payment would be going through only to be told that Chamberlin Scott hadn't actually released any money dispite receiving the invoices from my accountant two weeks ago...

And still the poor contractor waits....

RicardoSmith

Last agency I was with used to take 6 weeks. I've switched to another one now and it will be interesting to see if they pay faster. The break in salary between contracts is a pain in the butt to be honest. If the rate isn't decent it can make contracting not worth doing.

Zaph

The company I work for has actually stopped using Chamberlain Scott when they're hiring contractors. We've had 3 or 4 guys that came through them and every one had trouble with them. In the end the company got fed up with a) having contractors moaning to them about CS and asking them to do something about them, and b) having contractors spending hours each week trying to get sorted with CS while the company is paying for them to work.

I also know a guy who went to work in CS itself for a short while. They let him go after 6 weeks with no explanation and he hadn't been paid to that point. He spent a couple of months trying to get what was owed to him out of them but in the end I think he just gave up.

RicardoSmith

Whats the point in working if you don't get paid? I wouldn't go longer than 6 weeks without getting paid. Its too easy to get ripped off.