North American Maintenance Co., Inc.

[CL&T]

These companies are called Nationals and every industry seems to have them, from servicing computers, electrical, telecom, locksmiths, plumbing, lawn care, etc. The big chains and franchises don't have people in their stores that know how to deal with these trades when work needs to be done. Hell, what do they pay their managers $12/hr? So they contract with a National to provide the services to every store at a set rate. The National consists of a guy and a telephone. When a store needs service the National will call around to local businesses that provide the needed service and try to talk them into doing it for what they are willing to pay- which is much less than the normal rate. Many times the arrangement will be that the National subs out to some other outfit who in turn subs out to you.

While there are a few good Nationals who pay fairly and on time, most are absolutely horrible to do work for because of ridiculous contracts, ridiculous paperwork and job requirements and slow to no pay which they blame on anything- assuming you can talk to someone from not properly completing the paperwork or submitting it properly or on time at the end of a job. In short most are crooks.

If you want to weed out the honest Nationals from the shady ones just tell them when they call that you require a credit card to be on file that every job will be charged to upon completion. Betcha they hang up before you do.

Oh, and forget about trying to do work for the stores directly. Most are prohibited from dealing with you, they have to go through corporate and a National.

[HLM HustlerZ]

Originally Posted by CL&T

If you want to weed out the honest Nationals from the shady ones just tell them when they call that you require a credit card to be on file that every job will be charged to upon completion. Betcha they hang up before you do.

Too funny, the credit card thing is genius. It's terrible that some companies run off "stealing" money from the little guy. These national management companies are pathetic and angry AHHH!!

Not paying someone for agreed upon work is low, sorry, pathetic, and wrong.....But theres a lot of sorry @#$%& people in this world.