Apparently, they had some sort of disagreement leading up to this, but some hombre in Mexico says to his friend (albeit, probably in Spanish), "Hey, Carlos, make me a tamale." And Carlos says "Okay, my friend, you shall be a tamale." Then Carlos kills him and starts making tamales out of him.
I'm having a few disagreements myself right now. Last week, I had a problem with an attorney service that runs ads in the legal newspaper that say something like this (I'm paraphrasing so that nobody can use Google to figure out who I'm talking about):
"I'm in San Diego. I need it filed in San Francisco by 1:00 p.m. I want a conformed copy by 2:00 p.m. Then I want it served on five parties in four different counties. Then I want the proofs of service signed and filed by tomorrow. Oh, and I don't want to spend a fortune doing it."
"No problem. We're Uber-Great Attorney Service."
Well, we had a very simple task for Uber-Great: fax-file a paper in Napa County. If it's not on file by Tuesday, the client will be suing us for dropping the ball. We faxed it to them Friday at 1:45 p.m. This, apparently, is after their daily deadline, so we checked the box that says "After deadline, special delivery." And we waited.
We hear nothing on Friday. I call them just before 5:00 p.m. and get an answering machine. On Monday, I reach a live person by phone. "Is it filed?" I ask. No. "Well, it will certainly be filed today, right?" Uh, actually, no. "Why not?" It got here after our deadline on Friday. "And?" And so we cancelled the order. "I need this thing filed. Would you please un-cancel it right away?" Yes, but you'll have to re-fax it, because Uber-Great shredded the first fax.
Uber-Great is out. We have a new attorney service.
We need a new advertiser, too. The old one screwed up our ad with the wrong copy, the wrong telephone number, the wrong area code, and, when confronted with these and other errors, cancelled our ad, charged us for the six weeks left on our contract, and billed us for another nine months as a "penalty." Then they hired a collection agency from the east coast to impersonate attorneys and call my office, literally every five seconds, in an attempt to get me to talk to them a second time. One moron finally left me a voicemail saying that he would have my license to practice law taken away if I didn't pay for the erroneous ads.
Good luck. Wait. I take that back. I don't wish him luck. I hope he catches an embarrassing social disease and loses his reproductive organs. Absent that, he can use them on himself.
Bad as it was, I will never replace the old marketing company with LegalMatch, though. This company is totally sleazy. They market themselves with very misleading sales pitches that go like this:
"I'm calling for Lex Icon." [No mention that he is with LegalMatch]
"I am he."
"I have some clients in your area who need a wrongful death attorney immediately. Can I make an appointment to meet with you?"
Now, this might sound promising if I did that kind of work; but I don't. Anyhow, what he really means is that he works for a legal referral business, which -- for a fat fee -- hopes to have potential clients call with problems such as wrongful deaths and the like. I don't fall for it, but only because I admit to the caller that I am not interested in such cases. I plan to take on my next personal injury case when pigs fly. Even with genetic engineering, that will be well into the future.
"I could refer you to a very qualified personal injury attorney, though," I say.
"No thanks," the guy says. The ruse is then revealed. "What type of cases are you handling?" he asks. "We can put you in touch with clients in almost any practice area."
I pass. If they plan to market me as unethically as they market themselves, I want no part of it. Besides, I don't really need the business. I have plenty of clients, many of whom have much more frustrating problems than my little vendor issues. And no matter how annoyed I get, I can always come up with a list of at least a dozen clients who, at any given time, have a much bigger crisis than my biggest one. Plus, they pay me handsomely to solve those crises.
I guess I can put away my tamale recipes for a few more days.
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