JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A local small business owner said she was never paid for a contracted job she completed for a corporation based out of Miami.
She said Frontier Building Corp. is ignoring her calls and not being straightforward about her requests for payment.
With nearly $5,000 on the line, she said the money could make or break her business.
Now she wants money for a job she said was completed back in March.
The job included cleaning up a restaurant in Gainesville after construction and she said she even spent several days driving back and forth from Jacksonville to the job site.
News4JAX obtained all the documentation including contracts signed and emails between account managers promising the woman that her payment is on the way.
“For the little person, a small business owner, who do we go to? Where can we turn to? There’s nobody out there to help us,” said Mattie Sheppard, owner of Perfectly Pictured Decluttering. “I did the project, completed it. And now I’m waiting to get paid... They owe me$4,404 an d 28 cents, I believe, as of today, because then there’s late charges. So we got to add the late charges. It’s $100 per month that you’re late.”
She said she’s still waiting for payment and she’s not alone. A handful of other people gave the company bad reviews online, writing that they too were never paid for work completed.
“My husband has called them several times, I called them several times,” Sheppard said. “Like I said, the email, text messages tried to reach out to everybody we could possibly reach out to, nothing, nothing. And you can barely reach them, you can’t, they won’t even return your calls.”
After dozens of attempts to contact the business Sheppard said she’s taking them to small claims court.
Tom Stephens with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) said unfortunately, there’s not a lot small business owners can do in a situation like this one and hiring a lawyer can cut into profits.
“Companies like to bank on that being the final result: ‘We only owe them $5,000, it’s going to cost them more than that to sue us so we’re not going to pay them and let them fork it out,’” Stephens said.
Sheppard said she has a message for the company she said shorted her.
“They need to pay their business, that they need to pay the companies that are helping them fulfill their jobs. If it wasn’t for us, they wouldn’t get their jobs done. So why would you treat us so badly? Pay your people, pay your people!” she said.
News4JAX left voicemails and sent an email to Frontier Building. We did get a callback Monday evening asking for more information and were told the company would look into it and call back.
If this has happened to you, you can file a complaint with the BBB on its website.