So I recently received a bill from this company Per Diem Services Inc. The bill was for $500 for services I didn’t request. I generously offered to pay them $150 for the so-called “service” they performed. A few phone calls later and some condescending responses from the owner of the company, I terminated them completely and left them a negative review on their Google business listing page. This is where it gets exciting.
In response to my review the owner, Samson, leaves a 3 paragraph self-serving monologue about how great his company is, how I had to be “bailed out”, etc etc. He created a false narrative which I suppose on some level is to be expected. Usually when one is highly defensive they fall back on creating this self-serving dialogue. He calls me out by name attempting to embarrass me before a community of people that quite frankly I don’t know and don’t care about as it represents but a fraction of the attorneys in New York. The point is however is in creating this lengthy dialogue he appears insecure and defensive. It looks highly unprofessional when you attack someone giving you a negative review.
You’re always better off approaching these things with civility and class. You’re always better off saying less. For instance, my negative review accomplished what I wanted in less than 10 words. It was meant as an attack on the business because they had wronged me by charging my firm for services that I did not in fact order. The lengthy response is wasted energy and drama and in almost every situation, including this one, looks unprofessional.
At the end of the day, I expended little energy and got my money back. Per Diem Services Inc/Samson on the other hand spent a great deal of time and energy and lost money in the process in the form of the services they attempted to charge me for and in the form of the thousands of dollars I was spending on a yearly basis.
At the end of the day, the departure is for the best. It was an overpriced service and the quality was generally not what I expected but for a small number of wins (the biggest of which I had to coach the appearing attorney on). The experience taught me a valuable lesson about choosing quality over loyalty. I’m not working to find other per diem services in New York and happy to report that I’ve already located two firms that perform the same services for half the price.
