So I've sat on this problem for a while now and on my BIKE to work this morning I had an epiphany.. I'd post it here!
An aquaintance of a friend (I'll call him MIKE) deals with maintaining forclosed homes for the bank up until the bank sells those properties. He'll update the interior, get rid of pests, lawn maintenance, etc.. I am an engineer during the day, but I'm always willing to work my ass off to make a side buck, so I emailed the guy and said I'd be willing to take on any jobs he has. He explained that I'd get paid 30-45 days after the work was done, which I agreed to.
So last summer I ended up taking on a lot of jobs for him, mowing lawns, changing out locks, cleaning the interior of the houses, clearing gutters, clearing out some NASTY trash, etc. The checks were slowly coming in, mostly on time, and I was continuing to make a good amount of extra cash.
Here's how it worked..
1) Mike emails me and tells me what needs to be done and gives me an address.
2) I check out the address and give Mike a price, he agrees, I do the work
3) I take before/after pictures of the work I do, create a nice invoice and put everything in a PDF.
4) I send the PDF to Mike and I wait for my check
5) Sometimes I'm paid by the bank directly, sometimes by Mike directly. I paid taxes on this money when I filed.
I made $5700 extra cash in 4 months just working some evenings and weekends. He owed me another $1900 at that point, so I reminded Mike every week or so that I was still owed. He said "give it 90 days..that's standard" which conflicts with what he had originally said, but I waited.. This year I took on a bunch more jobs from him and made a good amount of money, but I was getting nervous about the $1900 he owed me. Finally I called him and said I'm going to have to take him to court to get the money. He reacted swiftly and had the contact at the bank send me a check right away. The check was only for about half of the money though..
This has now been a full year and I haven't been paid the other $965 that I'm owed! I no longer work for him because of this. I've looked into what it takes to take him to small claims court and it's a little tricky..
1) I dont know if I take HIM or the BANK to court.. This particular bank pays me directly. If I took him, couldn't he say "Hey I submitted the invoice - the bank owes him, not me". If I took the bank couldn't they say "Hey do you have proof that the invoice was submitted to us? We have no record of getting it..". I've spoken to the contact at the bank directly and he said he'd send a check but hurried me off the phone and didn't send anything.
2) According to what I've read online, I have to take them to court in THEIR district, which I believe is in downtown Chicago, about 35 miles from me.. this means taking an entire day off of work for that, then more for the court day(s).
Small claims court is designed so that you dont need a lawyer, but I wouldn't be opposed to hiring one and giving him/her a portion of the money to go to court for me. Is this even an option? I have DETAILED records of the work I did, exact dates, before/after pictures, invoices, and emails to/from the guy I send everything to.
What I think happened here is that Mike was super busy and didn't make submitting invoices a priority, or the bank mismanaged my invoices at some point. The bank contact said something to me over the phone about it "looking bad to the bank management" that these old invoices are coming up.
Is it out of line for me to find the bank executives phone numbers and discuss it with them? What can I do here? $965 is a lot of money to me.