What you will, however, find missing are both the lovely messages of support we received on the posts as well as the incredibly evil, nasty remarks we had to delete. Since we have replied to each of those messages posted we didn’t think there would be much call to repost them.
So, here is the whole sorry story in one go – including the end (formerly called part 7) in all it’s glory:
Our Story – 2009
Well, way back at the beginning of 2009 we were asked to advise upickstorage.com on how to put together a database of all storage and mini-storage facilities within the United States. This was by my partners older Brother. So as a couple, my partner and I set out looking how this could be done the cheapest, fastest way possible. We found that it would expensive for each individual state if purchased from a reputable marketing company. After further discussions, my partners’ younger brother established that we could use a Library facility and do it manually. For example: you can down load 25 individual company details at a time, which then could be transferred to a separate Excel spread sheet. In total it was over 64,000 companies we needed to extract. It was said that for this database, they would obtain a work visa for me to come to the US and continue helping with the site and they wanted my partner’s help setting up the office with the US. This was ideal for us because although I am from the UK, my partner is from the US and wanted to be closer to her family.
After weeks of working on this database we had half the names needed. I mean we worked. Morning, noon and night. Every spare moment outside of our regular 9-5 job was put in to building this database for the foundations of upickstorage.
We finally finished the database and forwarded this to upickstorge.com’s office in Louisiana. It was difficult because no one in the office knew how to operate Excel! So instead, each individual state had to be extracted, saved and emailed separately to my partner’s old brother. Both the owners got very excited the database was finished. But we still had to explain how to open a CSV file!? The next day my partners’ younger brother called thanking us, and stated that this would not go unrewarded as he realized how much had gone in to the database…
A month went by and the Visa issue got passed back and forth and finally to someone who relied heavily on us to put together the visa application. We were lead to believe that this was due to the fact that they did not understand the process?!
We received a number of calls from people asking when we would be in the States to assist with the project and that our assistance was needed sooner rather than later. We explained that we both had a LIFE! Family, children, jobs and a home and it would take time to co-ordinate a move of that magnitude. We raised our concerns and our insecurities about the whole business, each time we were told that we should have faith and be more entrepreneurial. It was also mentioned that if upickstorage failed for any reason there would always be a job for us in Louisiana.
The process of moving started to take off. We handed in our notices at work and we started to sell all our belongings. It was a living hell; every day our possessions were slowing disappearing out the door. Each day we both felt parts of our life vanish. Finally everything we owned was sold. It came to a small pocket full of money. We said our goodbyes to everyone that matters, including 3 very special children, it was the hardest good bye ever, even though we knew it was not going to be forever.
Even though we felt emptiness from leaving, we had high hopes and we were going to start a life that the children would benefit from. We’d be working towards the goal of having assisting in the business, with talk of possibility to travel between US and the UK more often, seeing family and opening doors and opportunities for those in our life that mattered.
So the day finally came, we arrived in the great United States. To the people that cared and would never hurt us, to our family. It was exciting and yet scary. We landed in Philadelphia, tired from the flight but still our hopes were high. We got to the customs line and the nightmare started. The customs and immigration person who processed us had CLEARLY had a bad day and decided we were good targets for his rage. We didn’t realize they have unlimited discretionary powers… he decided that an 89 day stay in the US was far too much for his comfort – especially so soon after our last visit 8 months previously. He flagged one of our passports and said to “leave a reasonable amount of time” between our visits but never actually told us what a reasonable amount of time WAS.
Finally it was over and we headed for food whilst we waited the nine hours for our next flight. That was when the bombshell about the visa was dropped. The Visa process had been stopped because nobody knew what they were doing and it was beginning to look very messy.
Three hours later we finally landed in New Orleans. It was hot and clammy, but it was also a relief. It was 1am when finally got to our new temporary home. We were also informed that we were expected in the Office at 9am the next day.
Thanks for all the views people we have more than doubled in viewers in the last 3 days. we promise we will update you with part 3 soon…
Part 3 of our story… It should be noted that we received an email stating there would be ramifications for our blogs. I like it noted that I am not writing anything libelous and have not broken any laws, I am stating facts from my perspective, and how upickstorage felt it was appropriate not to pay me for any of my time or effort… What people take from these blogs is up to them.
At 9am that Friday 12th June we were met by a guy who called himself Vice President of Operations for Upickstorage. He went over a number of systems he had put in place within the upickstorage office. He stated he would complete a list of systems and passwords for us as he was due to fly home and did not want to spend a moment longer in Louisiana. He promised he would have this to us by 3pm…. We didn’t receive the list until 5 days later, and when we did finally receive it, it was as much use as a chocolate fireguard!
We had a meeting with the owners that Friday, they told us that due to the fact that the Visa process had been stopped, we should work on the UK side of the Business with the idea that it could go live in the UK on our return to the UK in September and that we should observe as much as possible about the back end and the operational side of the business.
So, since my partner is a US citizen and she could legally be paid there and then, they decided to pay her a fraction of what she would USUALLY be paid. Her main duties appeared to be to manage the office, staff, scheduling and whatever else needed to be done, while I worked on the SEO, blogs, observed the office procedures and did whatever else needed to be done to help out – which turned out to be installing computers, installing software, staff training, IT, installing modems, answering phones, dealing with staff, rotas – just about everything that needs to be done in an office environment with the impression I would be paid when I left the US in September.
The following Wednesday we met with their CPA to discuss exactly how a non-resident alien on a Visitors/Business Visa should be paid. During the meeting it was established that we should be paid for the work done in the UK by cheque and any work done while in the US could be paid by cheque once we left the US. It was also pointed out that there is a tax treaty between the UK and the US, and we would have to file our own taxes on our return. My partner started her officer manager post (on the same wage as the people she was managing, simply out of loyalty to her brothers) while I began optimising the website, writing blogs and anything else I could do to help out.
The three months we were there consisted for the most part, dealing with the simplest issues that should have already been dealt with before a website goes live. The most fundamental things had been left off of the site. The back end of the site was failing to do its job, there was no real CRM, and customers had no flexibility with their accounts. In three months there were FOUR different phone systems and the vital Internet connection was intermittent. Anyway, the entire system was in chaos, from staffing right through to the computers they had installed. We offered many, many suggestions to improve the situation and were ignored – or worse.
Within two weeks of being there I seriously wanted to leave the US and return to the UK. I had a very bad feeling about how the situation was developing, but was talked out of it by my partner’s younger brother (VP of Marketing & Sales) with statements that the owner was a very honourable person – a great guy, fantastic guy, sterling person, and that we would leave the US with compensation for our time, if nothing else.
After weeks carrying on struggling through problem after problem, being assured time and again that the glitches and oversights on the website would be fixed – we asked to speak with the owner. We emailed him several times requesting a meeting that never happened. It felt like thousands of dollars were being flushed down the toilet on this site – and we could not meet with anyone regarding the problems. We were told we were “part of the team” and that upickstorage was going to be “an international company”, but it “wasn’t a priority at the moment”. We were strung along…. To us, we felt we sold everything and came over to the US, and no one was willing to taking on board our concerns.
The whole site was still having problems and we were ensured it would improve by the VP of operations. You guessed it, this never materialized. It was so bad at one point we were up until 12am with the VP of operations, arguing over something he had no idea about – because he was 6 hours away in a different state. Another night we were up till 3am trying to do payroll using a system he had put in place to monitor staffing times and attendance… his system was completely contradicting what we had in front of us regarding peoples attendance…It was becoming a joke.
So, on Thursday 9th August, after dealing with the guy in Austin until midnight, we went into the office… for him to start up again! It was a particularly busy Thursday! We had several interviews for prospective sales people scheduled (they’d had us fire two people in July, then three more employees walked out when they announced pay cuts three weeks before). The VP of Marketing and Sales had left the state for 3 weeks and was in Alabama at that time. For three weeks we had been in the office from 7.30am until after 5pm dealing with the day-to-day running and organizing the remaining staff. Setting the staff up with their daily calls was no easy task since the website had no customer management software, we were making do the best we could. Every morning we would come in and find the guy in Austin had accessed the back end and changed all of our notes and organization of the offers, so the bulk of the morning consisted of figuring out what he had done through the night.
At around 11am the guy in Austin started instant messaging us again, apparently he didn’t feel we had the “same level of commitment” he had. Well, let see… one of us hadn’t been paid a penny in 3 months but still got up and went into the office for 7.30am and worked until 5pm, the other was expected to manage the office on less than half her usual salary, we were trying to support ourselves and three children on one persons wages, which was not even a faction of what they was on before they gave their job in UK – what more could we do to show our “commitment”??
Around noon on Thursday 13th August, we’d had enough. Early mornings, late evenings, struggling financially, no information, no clue what was going on, more harassment from Austin…we emailed the VP of Marketing & Sales and told him we’d do the scheduled interviews, but after that we were calling the whole thing a day. At about 1.30 we walked out. At 2pm I emailed the owners of upickstorage and let them know that it wasn’t working, we had only a few weeks before we had to return to the UK, we told them we understood that they were in NO POSITION to go *worldwide* as planned and we simply needed to be paid for the work that had been done up till then. We attached an invoice to the email for the cost of the database we created while in the UK and the work that I had done while I was in the UK. Since their CPA had already TOLD them that it is perfectly legal and acceptable to pay us by two cheques, we never imagined any problems.
The total of the invoice barely covered what I would have normally been paid had I remained in the UK working for the previous months.
At around 3pm the VP of Marketing and Sales, my partners little brother called us to let us know we were morons. We had no idea how HUGE this business was going to be, we were IDIOTS to walk away now, what the hell is wrong with us sending them an invoice…on and on. Still no information on the business, no communication from anyone else – nothing. We spent the weekend with family, panicking over our future, kicking ourselves for EVER going to the US in the first place, wondering what the hell we would do when we were forced to return to the UK, and didn’t hear a word from upickstorage for three days.
At 5pm on Sunday evening my partners Mother phoned us as we were on our way back to her house. She stated the owners asked if we would go back the following day, we discussed it and decided we had absolutely nothing better to do, as little as she was being paid, it was better than nothing and we couldn’t say no. The owner phoned that Sunday evening to tell us that the guy from Austin would be there on Monday, but he is much less offensive in person than on the Internet or over the phone so we shouldn’t have any problem with him.
Monday morning, Austin guy was supposed to be in the office, he wasn’t. VP of Marketing & Sales was supposed to be there, he wasn’t. Just us and the meager staff we had remaining.
Tuesday morning all hell broke loose. Both owners appeared, VPMS showed up and now a new investor has appeared. The new investor was a really, really nice man and we liked him a lot. He had fantastic plans and looked set to put it all on the right track. Unfortunately none of this was communicated to the staff… For the following three days our employees were questioning everything – questions we could not answer. The investor had people in measuring their offices; he was interviewing people, giving vague pep talks.
And then nothing. For a week there was nothing, it was just work as usual. Monday morning comes around again and employees are coming in and out of our offices asking about rumors and statements made by the VP, they were under the impression the new investor was going to pay them $80,000 a year and thy wanted to know what was happening. We couldn’t TELL them, we didn’t KNOW. We just kept telling them they needed to speak to the VP of Marketing and Sales. He made the statements, he should clarify them.
My Partner has suggested I explain what exactly what it was we were asked to do – what got us involved with upickstorage in the first place. First off, let me explain to the few people who may not know, on a website like upickstorage, a customer enters their ZIP CODE (or Post Code) on to their site hoping to find a few matching storage facilities in their area and then they submit a bid.
So you see, the entire upickstorage website pivots on the ZIP CODE (Post Code) information. With out it – there simply IS NO WEBSITE. Facilities can’t be located by email address for heaven’s sake –but try explaining that to the owners of the site – it’ll be like beating your head against a wall, only slightly less enjoyable!!
My partner’s brothers contacted her and asked for her assistance – this is one of the emails: “I think your good enough on the computer that you could tell us how to get these email and addresses. Please feel free to school us. Please. Help figure this out. We have 2 months until the website goes live! At that point we have to go with what we have. I want thousands in the u s and hundreds in every state. I think this is going to be huge. The key is the database. I’ll call you soon with more info”
The problem he didn’t foresee was that compared to the number of storage facilities there are in the US, VERY FEW have publicized email addresses.
We looked into several options for obtaining a database. Most of them involved incredibly high fees upickstorage wanted to avoid paying. The US is a huge place, 64,000 names, addresses; phone numbers and email addresses (IF even available) do not come cheaply. My partner’s younger brother (VP of Marketing and Sales) had a membership to something called www.referenceusa.com. This website allows you to search for businesses by a large range of criteria and download them 25 names at a time to an excel spreadsheet. It couldn’t be narrowed down well and it also includes other useless information (for us at least) like profit margins, credit rating, executives names, owners names, director names, longitude and latitude locations – lots of worthless info that had to be deleted.
My math isn’t great but 64,000 names, downloading them 25 at a time – I did 2560 downloads over approximately 126 hours, converted them from their format into a useable CSV file. Then when I went to email the whole thing – they requested we break it down… into 50 separate states. Fine we thought and spent another few hours separating and emailing them to them one by one.
So, that was the FIRST bit of work we did for upickstorage and I suppose I SHOULD have been a bit suspicious when the owner went from offering to pay me FOR EACH NAME … to saying he would take care of my visa instead…. Then when the visa fell through, he passively refused to speak with us by ignoring all requests for a meeting…
Just to let you know, part seven of our story is due soon. As you can guest ever post we publish has to be read through by more than a few people, just to keep us all legal and above board. So please bear in mind it takes time to publish these posts… if you have not had chance to read our posts about our journey to the States
These are the events lead to the complete mess we are in now, as written by my partner:
“Two weeks before we walked out of upickstorage, the VP of Marketing and Sales and the two owners called a meeting of all the employees to let them know they were instigating an *exciting* new compensation plan. Employee pay was to be cut by $4 an hour – but they would get $1 for every counter offer they managed to get from a facility. The Monday morning after the meeting three people walked out. It was finally agreed that the change wouldn’t happen until upickstorage had a working website and customer management program, which was said to be *in the works* for weeks and weeks but nothing ever appeared. Needless to say, they hadn’t been excited about THAT change and were concerned when it would be instigated…
The evening of Wednesday the 19th my older brother phoned and said he would meet up with us to discuss the invoice and the work that was put into upickstorage. He said he needed to speak to the other owner and he’d get back to us. We waited for him to call back…he never did.
The entire week employees were coming to me with questions, He was at home ill (May interrupt and explain that I had swine flu) while I was in the office pacifying employees or telling them to speak to the VP of marketing. Then on Thursday the 20th August around noon, I was in the restroom when the VP of Marketing and Sales (my little brother) PHONED me from the office 20 feet away to say that our older brother and his business partner (the owners of upickstorage) wanted to talk to me.
I walked into the back room, my little brother walked out and the other two were sat at the table. My brother began by telling me that the original idea for upickstorage going “international” just wouldn’t work right now so they wouldn’t be able to send the website back to the UK with us. I said I could tell the site was in NO condition to be expanded at all. His partner then said that they had sunk SO MUCH money into the site; they had tried everything and just could not figure out how to make any money out of it. I again said I understood, and told them I thought once they got a working website with the functioning customer management program they would be in a much better position for managing sales etc… and then the money they were sinking into Google ads wouldn’t be such a waste etc… It continued like this for a little while until my brother mentioned us needing to be paid for the work we had done in the UK, and the work that had been since our arrival in the US. He said they couldn’t pay him anything because he didn’t have a Visa. I tried to say that was why they had our Mother (their bookkeeper at their office) talk to the CPA and that they COULD pay him.
But the minute the word “Mom” was out of my mouth…he went MENTAL. He started yelling and not being the type of person to stay and be yelled at, I got up and walked out of the room, went to my office and started packing up my things. He came FLYING out of the back office – still yelling “YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT! PACK UP YOUR STUFF AND GET OUT! I’LL LEAVE A CHEQUE FOR YOU WITH MOM. IT’LL BE ENOUGH TO GET YOU BACK TO SCOTLAND!! TALK TO YOU IN TEN YEARS!!”
Ok part 7 of our upickstorage experience. We are doing this from two different perspectives. One half being mine (his) and the other half my partners (hers). The reason for this is that what happened was so wrong and my view of the event could be a bit different and we were both affected in different ways.
HIS:
My partner called me at our temporary home and said, “I told you that should have come in today, they both (the owners) appeared!” I asked what was said, she explained that they had discussed that the option to take upickstorage was not on the agenda any more, then she suddenly burst into tears (I’d like to note at this point I have only ever seen her cry twice both times due to upickstorage). It was difficult to make out what she was saying due to the sobs. I finally understood that what happened and that her older brother the owner of upickstorage had flown in to a rage and had screamed at my partner.
You must understand by now, that I am very polite and extremely well mannered, very, very few issues make me angry. But after 3 months of being pissed around by people that had no idea how a website should work nor how to be customer focused, that my partner had been verbally abused just enraged me.
I asked my partner to come home and told her that I would meet her. When we finally met up, I asked her again to explain what had happened in detail, she explained said they would not paying for the work I had done whilst in the US, this just fuelled my anger with these people, the cowards had chosen to dump it on my partner instead of speaking to me at all.
I asked my Partner to ask her father to borrow his truck. We headed to her brother’s law office in the next town. On the way there I kept asking her for every bit of detail. She explained that he lost his temper when she had mentioned her mother and the CPA.
We finally arrived at the law office and asked to speak to her older Brother. He came out and said “ Hi” as though nothing had happened between him and my partner an hour earlier. He said he would be 2 seconds and disappeared in to his law partners’ office. They were in there for a while and finally came out and showed us to a boardroom. They asked me to sit down, which I politely refused. They started to explain that they could not pay me, because of my lack of a work visa. I asked them why I had been in their office every day and why had I been optimising their website, doing things for their VP of Operations etc. My partner then again mentioned the meeting we had had with their CPA, and their bookkeeper (their mother).
At this point her brother got up and said he’d bring his mom in and ask her…
IN ALL THE TIME her brothers law partner just sat there staring at us in awkward silence. Finally he and his mother came in. His mother reminded them both that they had requested she meet with the CPA to determine HOW to legally pay me and that she had come back the next day and had explained the process. Both of them sat there and denied any knowledge of it. They then said, “we did not need you, we never needed you nor do we know why you are even here.” I reminded her brother of the conversations we’d had on the phone while I was still in the UK, which again he denied. Both my partner and her mother also reminded them of past conversations… They just sat and denied any conversations ever took place.
I then brought the subject round to the database, Her brother said, “Suzette sent an invoice and we are not paying that much”. I explained that it was up for negotiation, as I had discussed on the phone with him the day before, but he had failed to call back that evening as he said he would. I also reminded him that the amount did not even cover the wages I would normally earn in the UK…
At this point I asked “so you expected me to work for free?” He simply replied “I never said I would pay you.” (It should be noted at this point that I remember discussing my concerns as to how they had treated a telephone contractor they had hired to install one of the many phone systems used over three months in the upicks office, I remember saying to my partner I thought they were very nasty to them). Anyway this “I never said I would pay you” kept being repeated over and over again by my partners older Brother.
I am a bit ashamed to say, turned round and showed him the bird, called him a knob and left… As I was walking out he muttered something under his breath, like a kid cursing their mother. I turned around and asked “Excuse me? I missed that” He replied “You’re REALLY getting nothing now!” Like a little girl falling out with her friends over a bag of sweeties.
He followed us out of the boardroom and through the office to the front office and closed the door behind us. The reason he followed us out is not clear, maybe he thought I was as childish as he is and I would knock down a plant or something… who knows.
Anyway, the day after all of this happened we found out that they had changed the locks at the office. I have to say I was a UK citizen staying in the US for 89 days; I was hardly going to cause any childish problems whilst I was there – even if I was the type of person to do such a thing!
Hers:
So, after my older brother exploded I started packing up my things, phoned my partner, and told him he should have been at the office – that I KNEW something like this would happen while he was working at home. He told me to meet him and I started walking home. When we met up I told him again what had happened and what had been said, that they weren’t sending the website to the UK as planned and that they would not be paying us for anything. He said to borrow my Dad’s truck and we would go and talk to them face to face so he could get the full picture himself.
We drove out to their offices in Madisonville, he asked to see my brother and we waited in the waiting room. A while later they took us through to the boardroom. My partner older brother and his law partner sat down, they asked us to sit, so I sat as far away from them as I could – my partner preferred to stand. He started the conversation by saying “So, can someone tell me what’s going on because no one has spoken to me in weeks.” That is when they told him – again – that the website would not be going to the UK, they were in an “awkward position” because he wasn’t allowed to work in the US and they could not pay him for anything because it would be…illegal. My partner answered, “Well, that’s why you had your mother meet with the CPA, before I even DID any work here to see what was possible. To determine HOW to pay me for the work I’d done in the UK before we got here and also for the work I’d be doing here!” Both of them said they knew nothing about the meeting with the CPA and they would not be paying him. Their stance was that he was basically an idiot for coming to the US with out a visa. My partner answered, “YOU said you were going to take care of the visa in exchange for the database! To be honest with you, when you passed it off to your MOTHER because it was too complicated for you and then by default it ended up BACK on us, I had a feeling it was messed up. But I was only TOLD there was no visa AFTER I LANDED IN THE US!” her brothers law partner said “Well, we told HER (pointing to me) we stopped the process BEFORE you left the UK, you could have not come!” I replied, “It was DAYS before we were to catch the flight! We’d sold everything, lost the flat, bought $5000 worth of plane tickets, we were in ENGLAND at that point saying goodbye to family what the HECK was I supposed to DO?!” She just said that wasn’t THEIR problem.
SO, more to myself than anyone else, I said, “Mom was right, you should have just paid me a bit more and it could have covered BOTH of us.” His law partner heard that and said, “Oh, I told your mother we couldn’t do that… it would be illegal, it would be the same as paying him.” So I replied “You think that I quit my job, left my friends, my home and SOLD MY LIFE to move here to work for YOU for slave wages? You pay me the same thing as the people you have me hiring and firing, stating that I’d “make money“ when YOU make money and I am going to be happy with this?! And Mom said it again just last night so apparently you DIDN’T tell her that.”
It was then that her older brother said he would go and get Mom to come in and straighten the whole thing out….
Mom came in and stood next to my partner. They asked her about paying him for the work we had done… Again, Mom replayed the whole episode, told them she met with the CPA as they had asked her to and they researched it and determined it is PERFECTLY legal for them to pay Him for the work he had done in the UK. Any work he did in the United States could LEGALLY be paid once we had returned to the England. There is a tax treaty between the US and the UK and it would be up to us to declare any earnings. She then reminded his law partner, word for word of their whole involved conversation two months previously… the law partner denied the conversation took place.
Again big Brother told my partner he shouldn’t have left the UK with out a work visa. My partner replied that had he known they would DO something like this he never would have sold everything to GET there, but they were INSISTENT that we hurry! Her brother denied the conversation. We both told him when he phoned us in Scotland he asked when we were coming, we said we have to hand in notice at work, we’d have to sell everything – there was no where to store it all and when did they want us there? Her brother replied “yesterday? Seriously there is a lot to do here. The sooner you get here the better!” Which is what we DID! Again her brother denied the conversation.
Once it was determined that they simply were NOT going to negotiate or even ADMIT to past conversations, my partner said we should leave. I got up and followed him out the door. I never saw the hand gesture my partner admits to, but when we were out the door in the hallway I heard my partner say, “Pardon Me?” And her brother replied “Well, you’re really getting nothing now!” My partner turned to leave, called him a “knob wipe” and we left. All the way out the door both my mother and brother followed us, but all I remember is my mother saying over and over “We’ll make it ok, don’t worry I’ll mortgage my house or something. It’ll be ok.” I couldn’t look at any of them. I was disgusted.
So that was our story. Again, we apologise for the references to the parts – we went through the posts again before publishing, but we didn’t want to spend too much time editing things out – it wouldn’t serve much purpose and it is after all the holidays and we didn’t want to spend the WHOLE two weeks putting all of this back together.
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