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Some of the Unprofessional Behaviors I've Experienced First-Hand:
(I’ll tell in the book, Professional Integrity, what they could have done differently.)
1. A bank manager refused to let me open an account because she felt anyone from out of town (Toronto) with cash to deposit must be a drug dealer. “We don’t want your kind here.”
2. An ad agency hired me to come with them to the station to advise their client, a doctor, who was appearing on a local Sunday morning talk show, then never paid me. Neither did the doctor. See #16.
3. A magazine editor bullied me into researching and writing an article, then after she published it, she refused to pay me what she promised. Not one cent.
4. I overheard a carpenter scream at his worker to keep skim coating and sanding one wall over and over until he was told to stop… so he’d run up an enormous bill.
5. The same carpenter arranged for a competitor of my marketing services to come into my house and on my dime, to pitch their services to him. It was a tactic designed to intimidate me. To prove my point, I offered him the same services for $40 a month and he declined.
6. A veterinarian required that I sign a full page release absolving the practice of all blame if anything went wrong with their treatment of my cat, but wouldn't let me have a copy of it. They shredded it in front of me. I left.
7. Eight out of 9 lawyers never returned my phone call when I tried to hire each one. One of the firms advertised his services on television to generate new business. If you won’t return phone calls from potential clients your advertising is a waste of money.
8. A cashier at a doctor's office made me pay an additional 66% over the doctor's handwritten invoice amount before she would allow me to leave the office. I knew it could happen again so I never returned.
9. A real estate agent who showed me only $40,000 homes – many were damaged and in dangerous neighborhoods – when I said I had $40,000 cash for a down payment.
10. A landlord refused to provide an affordable, non-toxic solution for my dangerously wet basement floor, but had money to replace carpets with new flooring in the empty unit next door.
11. Handymen put up drywall sheets after removing the newly installed insulation and vapor barrier. They also installed a $1500 tub without putting Quikrete under it and no backer board in the walls to support the $500 glass doors.
12. A plumbing contractor asked me how to assemble a toilet and then tried to install bathroom fixtures on top of dirty wet floors before the flooring had been installed.
13. An accountant charged me nearly $5,000 to look over my father’s prior year joint tax return, which was correct. (HR Block: $100.)
14. A lawyer I hired to advise me on how to settle my father’s estate, disappeared completely, and refused to respond to any of my calls, even those in which I offered to assist him if he needed help.
15. A commissioned stockbroker had my 90-year-old father keep the majority of his retirement portfolio in one high-risk stock, rather than diversify, which caused him to lose $1,000,000 of his $1,200,000 portfolio.
16. Multiple doctors allowed my father to suffer in severe pain for three years by refusing to prescribe sufficient pain medication. A simple PSA test and bone mineral density test would have determined he had bone cancer.
17. Another commissioned stockbroker I hired when I was executor, to preserve my father’s estate so it could be settled, did nothing but give me retirement advice. My father wasn’t retired; he was dead. He also sold stock I didn’t authorize him to sell so he could get a commission. That wasn’t legal, but he kept the commission.
18. I hired another lawyer to help my father change his Will so that his assets wouldn’t all go to two multi-millionaires and not his only child. The lawyer refused – even though I held Power of Attorney – and behind closed doors, three lawyers convinced my father who had dementia that his Will had been changed to his satisfaction. Then he wrote my father a strong letter that terribly upset my father that his wishes weren’t fulfilled.
19. A bank levied more than $230 worth of penalties when my father overdrew his account by $.13 (thirteen cents). If the check had been deposited the next day there would have been no overdraft. The bank also took funds out of his wife’s account, making her children think I was intentionally stealing from her, and as a result they would not allow me access to my father’s mail or personal possessions for several years after he died.
20. Several dentists exacerbated my severe jaw pain by doing surgery and creating appliances that significantly increased the pain permanently.
21. A big box store paid in full to install flooring in a two-story house, not only left before installing a bedroom, a closet, a landing, and all baseboards, but left 7 boxes of damaged flooring in the house. To add further insult the men peed in a new, not-yet-installed toilet.
22. Three handymen argued with me about the color they intended to paint a door. When I told them to stop, they ignored me, used the wrong color anyway, and also sprayed floor, walls, and furniture with the red paint as their way of telling me they don’t take orders from a woman.
More true accounts will be in the book with photos and documentation… and my recommendations.
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