Non-payer warning: Ecole USA November 30, 2011
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Scam alert.trackback
A word of warning against a notorious non-payer (there are quite a few – this one is my personal cross to bear…)
The company operates under the names EGS / Ecole USA / ecoleusa.com / Ecole Global Solutions. I like to call them Dear Client:. They don’t pay their bills. My unpaid invoice for $59.08 is 7 months overdue. Payment was due on April 11, 2011. They have given me nothing but excuses every time I contact them. You can read their excuses for why they can’t afford to pay a $59.08 invoice here, here and here. Their comment about there being a “global crisis around the world” had me rolling on the floor laughing. That’s good stuff! They are banned from posting jobs on Proz.com, but that doesn’t mean they won’t contact you directly. My hope is that translators will google them after being contacted and see this blog post as one of their hits.
I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this one unpaid invoice – my very first non-payment – four blog posts (not including this one). 🙂 Luckily I never let the amount get too large. When they contacted me in July with another small job I said no because they hadn’t paid my first invoice. It is more of an irritation than it is a hardship, because I was so proud that I had never been stiffed on a job in 16 years. I’ll probably just write the invoice off as a loss when I do my taxes next April (when it will be a year overdue). But who knows what will happen – maybe they will google themselves and see this post and pay me 🙂 And maybe tomorrow pigs will fly…
Update: this blog post is the fourth hit when you google “Ecole USA”. I’ve succeeded!
Musings from an overworked translator 
You are not the only one! I worked for this company Ecole USA in Argentina and they never paid. Fortunately, I just accepted a very small job from them. I’m still waiting here, after two years… 🙂
Heh… they messed with the wrong translator…
Actually a great way to get non-payers out of their box – you already rank on position three for ‘Ecole USA’ on Google DE. You should offer translation services 🙂
The problem with such ‘name-my-website-whatever-you-want-dot-com’ clients – they get a new site and change nothing. So, checking Google / website history helps.
cheers
> why they can’t afford to pay a $59.08 invoice
I’m surprised they wrote three replies for that small invoice. The admin cost of writing three replies employing workers in Europe is phenomenal.
I really don’t understand it at all. In any case, I’m surprised to see (on your blog) that the complaints are similar to the complaints I’m posting on my blog in Spain… I was vaguely hoping the US was much better! But as these bad payers say in their first email: “there is a global crisis around the world” — which is (incidentally) bad writing anyway, if it’s *global* it’s *around the world*… No need to add “around the world” there!
Leon Hunter
Leon, these scammers are NOT in the US, they’re in Argentina! You think they could at least do a well-written e-mail, but no, they don’t, they’re such idiots that they don’t even know how to speak English.
Eh… they got me! They paid my first invoice (USD 1.000) but never paid the second one (USD 1.200). Now I think I’m an idiot. Is it possible to do something? I don’t know what to do…
I can’t believe they are still fooling people around the globe after so many years!! They owe me $1,500 since 2007! I know will never get that money.They used the same trick then, they paid me for the first service ad never for the second one. How can we stop the??!