Two days after taking a job for Tesla, owner of The Giving Pies got a simple text message canceling the order
A catering contract to celebrate Black Heritage Month turned into a tough lesson for a Black-owned bakery in the South Bay earlier this month.
What started as a $16,000 deal ended up costing the small business owner thousands of dollars instead.
On Valentine’s Day, the owner of The Giving Pies in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood received a pretty sweet call from a representative with Tesla: a catering job for thousands of mini-pies for a Black History Month event.
Owner Voahangy Rasetarinera, who started the business out of her home in 2017, says both sides agreed on a quote and exchanged an invoice for 4,000 pies for delivery this week. Because of the tight turnaround, Rasetarinera asked staff to work extra hours, she bought ingredients and packaging supplies and declined at least three other catering jobs.
I don’t think this is legal, since it’s a custom order. This is not like a consumer ordering an off the shelf product, it’s more like a verbal contract IMO, but IANAL.
depends on the cancelation clause, usually there would be a time frame before the event they could cancel. There should also be a deposit-especially for events this large…non refundable would have been ideal especially if you need to get materials & OT for staff.
They exchanged an invoice which is closer to a quote unfortunately, as invoices are not contracts with clauses.
What sucks is it would cost her more in lawyer fees to sue than she lost. Fuck Tesla.
I don’t think you can bring a lawyer to small claims court, to prevent this exact scenario. Tesla might send a manager or nobody. They can’t send their legal team.
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IDK if 16k is small claims, but if it is, she should definitely take it there.
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You can’t sue for the whole amount if you don’t actually deliver the items. Unless the contract specifically states the entire amount is non-refundable.
You don’t have a right to the profit, but you could probably get your costs and labor back. It might be easy. They might not even show up.
I wasn’t even thinking of small claims court since I thought the cap was only a few thousand dollars (depending on location), but that is good to know.
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Yeah, if you’re an inexperienced caterer this is an unfortunate lesson.
Sue then for legal fees, also. Fat chance, I know.
It depends. Somewhere in there she said the rep switched and approved it. I would have definitely asked for something up front. But it can be confusing if you are bounces around between reps.
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big companies don’t care, they are rich enough that they don’t have to abide by contracts with little people.
So if Tesla is stupid enough to order again, she can say Okeydokey I’ll be right on it, and when the delivery is due, she can just say Sorree I’m not gonna deliver anything anyway, have a nice day?
That’s not a viable business environment, and surely there must be regulation to prevent businesses fucking each other off like that.
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From a company like Tesla it shouldn’t be necessary. I can’t imagine why they prefer to have their reputation tarnished for this?
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It shouldn’t be necessary but the lesson here is always get at least half upfront and if the multi-billion dollar corporation protests ask them why they want free stuff. Custom orders should always need at least half payment up front.