Complaint Review: Wagner International - Internet

During 16th-22nd of July 2016  I was engaged by Wagner International (Wagner Consulting International, New York. Project Manager: Raul Valenzuela) to do a Norwegian-English translation. The work consisted of 16,000 words, and involved translating a technical document concerning electro and SCADA installation for the Eiganes and Hundvåg tunnels in Norway. I sent an invoice on the 22^nd of July 2016. On the 10^th of August, having not been paid, I contacted Wagner International, only to be told by Natalia Wagner that “July progects [sic.] have payment cycle till 10^th of September”.  As of now, 13^th of December, I have still not received any payment, despite numerous assurances that I would.

On the 6^th of October I contacted the Project Manager, Raul Valenzuela, and on the 7^th of October there was anew development - he wrote that “regarding project WI-FCHBRSTZNG0713-98035004, we unfortunately had claims from the client that were true. I'm afraid to say that we had numerous complaints this client about the finished document. There were a lot of mistranslations and/or grammar errors in most parts of the document, as was pointed out by the client, which I'm afraid to say are true.

We've been reworking the document and working closely with the client since then and due to this, if our client accepts our rework of the file, your invoice will be included in the next payment cycle.”

I take this to mean that there are several errors found in my translation work (which, by the way, is absurd – I am a professional linguist, translator and interpreter and sent them nothing but the best), but that they still will pay me the agreed sum when they have reworked the file. It is difficult to understand the logic of this. On the 6^th of December Raul Valenzuela reiterated that there was several problems with the translation, but was not able to provide me with any indications as to what was wrong with the translation, although I have previously asked specifically for this.  I know that this company has been reported on Ripoff Report before:

07/12/2016 10:29 PM: http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/Dental-Wholesale-Direct/nationwide/Wagner-Consulting-LLC-Wagner-Consulting-International-LATE-PAYMENTS-WITH-CONTINUOUS-EXCUS-1316589, in which the writer stated the following:

“This company hires freelance translators to work for their clients. First of all they will not give you a legitimate contract to sign, and they will ask for you to work on projects with a cheaper rate. After the projects are delivered, you will submit invoices at the end of the month - however the problem occurrs [sic.] at payment. This company has a bad financial system that they will always, ALWAYS have delayed payments, they will not keep track of each translators job completed, and the financial department often lose the invoices that were submitted. On top of that, they will not pay for some projects for their own reasons, such as "the client did not pay". And they often reduce the payment amount that were agreed in the first place because later on they have decided that the job was "badly done" without any warning.

I advice [sic.] the freelancers who are out there to not work for this company for many reasons. And if you do intend to work for them, you MUST present your own contract so they will pay for the work you did.”

In my case, I had agreed to do the work after they initially contacted me, so I simply thought a written email agreement was good enough. In essence, my experience is very similar to the above report, an experience characterized by Wagner International’s stalling of payment, and what appears to be absurdly inaccurate bookkeeping and track-keeping wherein some people at the company continues to guarantee payment whereas the project manager invents flaws with the translation, which he cannot even indicate. Such unsupported slander is simply insulting, and I will, like the other translator quoted above, very much like to let translators know about this company and stay away from them. Their business practices are seriously questionable, and I am now quite certain that I have been taken advantage of and that I will not be paid for my work.