Be careful about their billing!!! Think carefully before giving them a call, since in my case, they started to charge me from the moment that I picked up my phone to call them.
I hired Construction Dispute Resolution Inc. to help assess a problem of my new house, since we might need to sue the seller for the undisclosed damages. Everything was fine until I got their invoices, which I thought were very unreasonable. Here are a few examples:
1) They started to charge me from the moment that I contacted their company. I was making inquiries about what they do, what qualifications they have and how they charge, briefly explained my situation, and was trying to assess if their company could help me with my situation. Yet they charged me for about an hour for this. I do not understand why they charged the time that they were doing marketing for their company (i.e. explaining what they do, their backgrounds, their qualification and their hourly rates.)
I have made similar enquiries to other companies: although at the end, I did not hire them, none of them charged me for these enquiries. I think this is common practice in the consulting industry: no one is charging you just for introducing their company to you!
2) They charged me another X hours for their "service" on the next day before I agreed to hire their company. I think it is unreasonable since
a) Again, the main purpose of the interaction was to assess if their company had the experience and expertise to help me with the situation, it should have been considered as their marketing expense, not a charge to the client.
b) Moreover, at that time, I had not even decided to hire them.
3) The billing statement listed overcharged items such as the following:
The Company charged me X hours for replying my email, but from the moment that I emailed the consultant (the earliest time that he could possible start to work on my case) to the moment that I received his email, and immediately called their office and knew that he had already left the office for another client, there was less than X hours...
Shocked by their overcharged billing statement, I started to question all their time logs. I found most of their times were untraceable, e.g. time spent on emails, uploading photos, research, etc, I could not prove they were wrong. But IF they are correct about their times, then they must be very inefficient, and you will have to pay for their inefficiency!
I STRONGLY suggest that IF you want to use their service, 1) keep time logs yourselves, 2) ask for their charges on a daily basis, so you can find problems earlier 3) eliminate emails, use phone calls for discussion, since you can get the time spent on phone calls from your telephone bill, but you cannot control how much time they spent on reading your emails. And whatever they charge, you will have to pay! read more