What’s Next?

Readers who have negotiated with suicidal friends and loved ones are familiar with the “what’s next” argument.  Why off yourself now?  Your chances of dying eventually are good.  Once that happens, you will have all eternity to be dead.  And once you are dead, you won’t be able to see what happens next.  Senator supports infrastructure bill, gets stranded on highway overnight.  Thug in a rug elected chief executive (that’s Providence, not D.C.).  Mayor caught smoking crack (D.C., Toronto).  Frogs burn fossil fuels, boil selves slowly.  You want to miss that?  Why rush things?  Mel Brooks said that tragedy is a guy walking down the street, lost his wife, house, family, suffering from cancer.  Comedy is, he falls into a manhole.  You off yourself, you miss seeing the guy slipping on the banana peel and falling into the manhole.

I have had a few offers for my parks.  Not as many as I would have had if they were in red states like Ohio or Michigan, but quite a few.  Some were very generous.  Not fuck-you money, but enough to make me slightly better-off than I would have been, had I remained in the corporate world.  I understand that I am lucky to have received those offers.  I also realize that the good times will not last forever.  Cap rates will increase when interest rates go up.  The whack-jobs in Albany will continue to have their way with us.  A rational investor would use this moment to sell.  But, like most investors, I am not entirely rational.  You can’t make this shit up, and I want to know what will happen next.

I ordered a new home from a nation-wide manufacturer in March of last year.  The contract for sale specified that the manufacturer would deliver the home.  Shortly before the home was due to be delivered, I was told that, because the manufacturer’s usual transporters were busy, they would not deliver the home for me.  They could, however, refer me to another guy who came well-recommended, who I could contact directly.  I told them that I would not do business with that guy because I knew him and he had a lousy track record.  They arranged with another guy to deliver the home.  He delivered it on December 31.

The new guy damaged the home.  The home comes with a one-year warranty from the manufacturer.  I asked the manufacturer to fix it.  They said that they were not responsible for the repair, because the damage occurred on the transporter’s watch, not theirs.  That made me spit into the phone:

–What?  I paid for an undamaged home!

-Ordinarily, we would cover the damage, but Sam is not one of our approved transporters.  You hired him directly.

-But that’s because you blew off your obligation to deliver it!

-Please contact Sam directly.  His insurance should cover it.

It gets sleazier.  The original contract was written in the form of an itemized invoice.  Total price was broken out into a base price, an option charge, a ‘miscellaneous charge’ (effectively, a surcharge for inflation), and $2,600 for shipping.  Once the home was delivered, the buyer’s bank requested a final invoice.  The final invoice was the same as the original contract, with one difference.  The $2,600 charge for shipping had disappeared, and the ‘miscellaneous charge’ line-item had been increased by $2,600. 

That’s right.  According to the initial contract, I paid x + $2,600 for a home, delivered.  According to the final invoice, I paid x + $2,600 for a home undelivered.

In fairness to the manufacturer, they did not do this to steal $2,600 from me.  My sales rep told me that I could get a refund for it if I paid the transporter and then sent an invoice to the applicable office of the manufacturer.  The change to the final invoice was not about the money.  It was about wriggling out of a contractual obligation.  They folded this expense into the ‘miscellaneous charge’ item so that they could take the position that, because I had arranged transport directly, instead of through their approved transporters, they were off the hook for damage caused by the transporter.

An email exchange followed.  The manufacturer said that the damage happened on the transporter’s watch.  The transporter said they did not have a crew to fix it.  I said that I didn’t give a shit whose watch it happened on, but it clearly did not happen on mine, and I am in contractual privity with the manufacturer, so why don’t they fix it and fight about costs between themselves. 

The damage is cosmetic, and will get fixed.  Nobody is going to go to court or go bankrupt because of this.  The worst that will come out of it is some brain damage and a hit to good will.  But the incident reinforced a business lesson that I thought I had already learned, but that never ceases to make me slobber on myself.  That is that it doesn’t matter whether you are dealing with a nation-wide manufacturer of manufactured homes, Goldman Sachs, the whitest of the white-shoe law firms, or a crack smoking, poker-wielding mayor with an ill-fitting toupee.  Whoever your counterparty, hold on to your wallet.  And keep your eye out for open manholes.