Facing a Small Business Dilemma
It’s easy to sit here and right the pieces for this blog. Even though I’m writing about things that Toni and I have experienced there is a certain disconnect … the things I’m writing about are in the past … they’re over and done with … we have faced the challenges, dealth with them, come to a conclusion and have moved on.
But now I find myself wanting to write about something that is current … it’s happening now … we’re wrestling with the problem now … we don’t have a position on it … and it is something that we are very uncomfortable with.
Let me try and explain. There is another small business here in town that is involved in providing computers for its clients. The clients are always under the impression that the computers are built by this small business but in fact they are not. Instead they are built by another small business here in town that belongs to a friend of ours.
Our friend builds the machines and charges the other business the same figure he would charge if he were selling the machine to a private individual. The other business then adds on as much as 50% and that is the amount their customer pays for the computer.
Well … that may not bother you but it doesn’t sit well with me even though it is free enterprise and all that stuff. Up to this point Toni and I are not involved but now one of the clients of that small business wants quite an extensive web site developed and the small business has come to us.
They want to operate under the same conditions as they do with our friend. They want to appear as though it is them building the site even though it would be us doing the work. They want us to keep the price down so that they can add on a sizeable amount for themselves.
They want us to remain in the background and have no contact with the client.
Now of course, when you’re building a website the very first person you want to talk to is the client. You need to get inside his head and find out what he is thinking and where he wants the site to go - so not talking to the client is not an option.
And we have been quite clear about that. No contact with the client means we don’t want the job but even if we do get access to the client there are still other ethical questions that we need to deal with.
Perhaps I’ve just been thinking out aloud here but if you want to add your thoughts please feel free to do so.
