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Trying to evade rental amount and lost 4 cards - Advice please!!!

M

mpallikonda

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Hi,

Recently I rented my Red One (#534) to a guy who was referred by a DP friend. He lost 4 of my Lexar 8GB CF cards during the shoot.
Now, after 30 days of shoot, I have neither received my rental money nor my CF cards. I have been sending him Emails, Text messages and calling. So far no use and he is acting as if he is doing me a favor.
I didn't have any rental contract with him. It was all verbal. He did have Production Insurance though.

Could some one please advise what can be done to resolve the situation?

Thanks in advance,
Murali
 
Ouch!
Get paid before letting anything out for rental!
That being said, you still own the camera, so, you might want to show up on set and either ask for the funds to cover the rental and lost cards (get them to sign a rental agreement as well!), or take the camera back and ask for the funds to cover the cards and the rental time they did have the camera.
If the rental is over, small claims court.
 
always have a rental agreement.. even if its for a friend.. the gear is your livelihood. you shouldnt be responsible for other peoples fuck ups...

small claims court wont do anything for you without a written contract.. verbal agreements are impossible to prove
 
Thanks Zakaree.
I just found some information on "Small claims" in NJ. I however have all the communication between the guys and me. However I doubt if this has any amount mentioned.
Next time, I will make sure to get a rental agreement. You are right about f**ups.
 
Even without the rental mentioned, he has lost your CF cards. At the least you should be able to recover the replacement cost of those, including shipping and sales tax. You can probably also get loss of rental income for those for the period they have been lost.
 
ericyoung said:
Even without the rental mentioned, he has lost your CF cards. At the least you should be able to recover the replacement cost of those, including shipping and sales tax. You can probably also get loss of rental income for those for the period they have been lost.
Click to expand...

That's true, Eric.
 
while it won't be easy to prove your case without a written contract, courts don't have much patience for free-loaders trying to take advantage of an honest small business.
 
In small claims court you will need to establish that your renter did if fact have your camera on set. You can do that by contacting the people that your renter was working for and get a statement that they received red footage.

Then file a lien against that footage with the third party. If the DP or whoever your renter was working for, has not yet paid your renter, the third party will withhold payment to your renter until the lien is satisfied.

Time is of the essence. Telephone the third party or DP today.

Good luck
 
been to small claims twice and won both cases. Email is often taken as proof. And as one other poster said...judges are very "REAL" and have no patience for bull-shitters taking advantage of others. I think small claims is up to $7500 per incident now. Usually worth it for a quick turnaround and a few hours at the courthouse.

Collections is usually the problem. If this person has a business, you call local sherrif and there's a fee to send a deputy to their registered place of business during business hours--even if it's their home and wait all day for clients to come in...and he tells them to make all checks payable to usually Sheriff or county...don't recall. BUT tell you this, as soon as i got a judgment, I called Sheriff in San Diego County...$200usd per day for deputy and the shear joy of knowing how those folks felt when this guy sowed up was worth it. But they called ten minutes after he arrived wanting to cut me a check. Other methods are to get judgement and find an account to seize.
Bottom line as long as you put in the time, you can annoy the hell out of someone that thinks they can walk all over you. AND....the satisfaction is well worth it.
 
Murali - personally i would be raising hell.
1.if he "lost" the cards then what happened to the vision?
2.send a invoice with final demand for payment and state the there will be a 10% compounding increase if payment is not late.
3.who is this plunker? people should know so he is so he can not do this again.

if all else fails go to the client/agency and give them a heads up. they may not be to chuffed that they are connected to such a person.
sorry for the rant - seen this many times and for some reason butt holes like this keep getting work!

hope you get a good result or a least your cards back.
 
Thanks a lot guys, for some amazing insights. Appreciate it very much.
I did think of filing a police complaint regarding stolen cards. I'm going to give one final notice to the guy and if he doesn't respond in favor, I'm going to jump in to some action.
You are right, Satisfaction is well worth the whole effort.
BTW, if this guy doesn't respond I will provide his details here in complete (I hope that doesn't mean I'm breaking Forum rules).

~Murali
 
There is always option B.

Dog-the-Bounty-Hunter.jpg



In all seriousness, I just waited six months to be paid by one of the most successful production companies in all of NYC.

If I hadn't started calling their billing person every few days, I might never have been paid.

Sometime the rental business is a bitch. :emote_head_explode:
 
Does your DP friend know him personally or not?

Annoys the crap out of me. If someone is forthright with me from the offset and say something fell through or there were genuine financial issues that arose afterwards I will work with them and will be lenient. Disappearing or just being a dick and refusing just gets under my skin.

Zero respect requires zero tolerance. Time to get vocal if you can and embarrass him if you can. Do you know anyone he is associated with or involved in the film he shot?
 
Tim Hole said:
Does your DP friend know him personally or not?

Annoys the crap out of me. If someone is forthright with me from the offset and say something fell through or there were genuine financial issues that arose afterwards I will work with them and will be lenient. Disappearing or just being a dick and refusing just gets under my skin.

Zero respect requires zero tolerance. Time to get vocal if you can and embarrass him if you can. Do you know anyone he is associated with or involved in the film he shot?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if my DP friend knew him personally, but, I think he was friend of DP who worked for the project. I agree, I would wait if he says he is short of money. But, right from start he kept on saying he is sending it, mailed it and so on. It has really got under my skin now.
 
This happened to me from time to time. Forget the verbal contract. That only means you have to prove your right.

Instead send a invoice for the stuff thats missing together with the amount for the rental. If he contratics the invoice, he needs to prove he is right. If someone "drops" something they rented, its their problem. I charge them the amount it takes for me to get new ones back.

Also, I don't know how things are in the US, but here you can "sell" your invoice to a larger company that does a fast financial check on the "customer", that gives you the money the same day (you loose maybe 10% in fees, but considering you can end up with 0% its a pretty good deal). And then he can do whatever he feels like when the due date is up, but if he doesn't pay, usually the invoice becomes very expensive, and to a company you don't want to own money too..

People telling you they are short of money, just tells you to forget the money. Its his problem if he has to loan money to pay you, your not his personal bank.
 
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