How I was duped by a Pune based agency
I am an English-Kannada translator with more than 16 years of industry experience. This is to share my experience of working with one of the Pune based agencies Panacea BPO (http://panaceabpo.co.in/).
I have been working with this company for the 2-3 years and their payments have always been on time. They are mainly into book translations and I have translated many books from English to Kannada for them. Recently, I translated a book that had around 1 lakh words. Throughout my working period, I was providing the partial delivery of the book and received no response from the agency.
I finished the book in about 2-3 months and waited for another 2 months to get the feedback from the agency. Then, after much insistence, the company came back to me saying that the evaluator at the client end had evaluated the book and he said the quality was not good and the editor from the client end apparently rejected the book with a single comment.
Imagine. I work for months on a book which is about 1 lakh words and I keep sending the work in installments and all I get is a lame feedback from the agency with a single sentence, “The quality is not good”. No detailed comments, no specific identifications of the problems, no nothing. Apparently, he was some big shot editor and he didn't feel it was necessary to justify his rejection of work.
Now comes the best part from the agency. The agency Panacea BPO washed off its hand from the entire episode and said that it cannot pay me because the client had not paid them. The total amount was about 85,000 and the agency said it couldn’t pay me a single rupee because the client had not paid. It also refused to fight against the client and file a case against the client citing “internal reasons”
Now, this is a highly unethical practice by the agency. As a translator, my business is with a agency, and not with the end client. I don't even care whether the client has paid to the agency or not. If the client is not happy with the quality, they should pin point where the problem is and there is always a chance for rework. But apparently, the client didn’t see this necessary and the agency didn’t see it necessary to fight with the client either.
Ultimately, this is my months of effort going down the drain and the agency leaving me high and dry without paying me a single penny. I have all the evidences with me and I would like to know what recourse do I have. Also, I would like to caution the fellow translators against such companies who just don't care about their translators.
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