[ChadKoelling]

I'm going to try and keep this short and sweet. My name is Levi Koelling and I have a small computer shop, Advance Tech, in Alexandria, LA. I was contacted by Prism Pointe Technologies about doing contract work on their behalf. I was supposed to be paid $80 per ticket for each call that I did under net 30 terms. I have done three such calls all of which were approved and accepted by Prism Pointe. Unfortunatley to date I have not been paid by this company. After repeated attempts at contacting Prism Pointe with no response regarding payment I began to question the company and did a little research on them. Apparently this is a nationwide problem as there are reports everywhere of people who are facing the same issues. This company receives big contracts from companies such as Lexmark, HP, Dollar General and more then is supposed to contract out and PAY the techs who go on site to resolve the issues. Little people such as myself have no leverage because the company quits using the techs as soon as they start to question payment. My first call was in June at which time they quit calling me for work. They only owe me $240 so it makes it hard to justify suing them when I would have to travel to Georgia to go to court. Any help PC World could provide would be greatly appreciated. I have all my paperwork too if you could publish this an issue to prevent other technicians such as myself who subscribe to your magazine from being burned as well. If enough people hear of this Prism Pointe will soon find no technicians and then maybe some of the big contracts can come to some of the little guys. Thanks for your time.

Advance Tech
Levi Koelling, Owner

[efcmediait]

Levi, I too have been a victim of PPT. I did a few jobs here and there for them making an average of $50-75 per service call then in February & March of 2009 they called me about a larger local job on the Naval Station in Newport, RI. I had 2 techs on the job for 3 days for a grand total of $1590. I sent in all the paperwork and even the on-site contact who was a Navy employee communicated with PPT telling much they were satisfied with the job. To date, I have not gotten paid. I've left numerous messages on the CFO's voicemail as well as a few other key people in the company and so far nothing. This border lines on Theft of Service, Fraud and I'm sure the U.S. Navy would NOT want to be associated with hiring a contractor that rips off its techs. These people have got to be stopped. This should not be allowed to continue.

The best part, about 3 months ago I got a call from a familiar number... Turns out it was PPT. The guy on the phone wanted to know if I was available for a service call in my area. I quickly explained my entire situation and told him that he is working for a company that defrauds technicians and that he is helping them do so by continuing to work for them. He was genuinely amazed at what I had told him and didn’t know what to say. I find it amazing people would willingly work for such a company knowing how they operate. If they don’t know then the company is extremely scandalous to hire good people to call techs for them with no intention of paying the techs.

I should probably also say that there is a lot of talk about why they can't pay techs. Some say that any MPC service calls cannot be paid because MPC hasn’t paid them. However, the money they owe me has nothing to do with MPC. It was a contract between the U.S. Navy & Best Buy for new LCD TV's and DVD's Players installed and wired in 100 room hotels on the base. PPT was the service provider that Best Buy hired to do that install.

This post has been edited by efcmediait: 10 January 2011 - 10:07 PM