I work for a small company, in the United States. Part of my duties is building out quotes for products and services our company sells. I’m trying to avoid being overly specific, but basically I have been asked to quote out a product we often sell, but to also include in the quote a feature which out company cannot actually provide. The customer has several of the item I am supposed to quote already and believes that they have the additional feature on all of the existing devices, so expects to see it on this quote for their new site.
I have brought up with my boss in the past that we have not implemented the additional feature and to the best of my knowledge we can’t. He assured me he was looking at addressing that. Today, after receiving the request for this new quote, I asked my boss about it, he said he still hasn’t come up with a plan to address the issue, but wants me to move forward with pricing it out anyway.
It would be a big hit to our company if the customer left us, but I struggle to see how what my company is doing here isn’t fraud. I’m not really comfortable with doing this, but my relationship with management is already strained and I wasn’t really looking to create any more waves at the moment.
Are there good resources I could look to to determine if this would constitute fraud from a legal perspective? Has anyone here ever been in a similar situation?
I’m looking for another job, but don’t have anything lined up yet, so nervous about doing (or not doing) something that would get me fired, but Im not comfortable with what appears to me to be dishonest at best and fraudulent at worst.
Edit: wanted to add that to the best of my knowledge, we aren’t selling that additional feature to anyone else at the moment. I think my boss is just afraid of this customer in particular finding out since they’ve already been sold the feature and they’re a larger customer.
Edit 2: thanks everyone for the advice. It is much appreciated. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do tonight.
Refuse. I’ve done so multiple times. They were very small things, not job-ending / company-boycotting things. Like setting someone’s auto-reply when they took time off. I asked their supervisor to write it for me and pasted it in.
Them him/her I have to think about it for a bit, and then take a recorder in my pocket when “revisiting” the conversation.
No. Sorry. Next time you ask, can you put it on an email please?
I have never worked in IT and not had at least one project I worked on which I didn’t think was immoral. Even at a small web dev agency I was working on an app for keeping track of zero hours contract workers during their shifts in a major UK supermarket. I got invited into a meeting 2 weeks before it got released and told not to buy any tescos stock.
2 weeks later on release they fired several thousand of their full time employees and referred them on to this 3rd party to get their old jobs back with new - worse - contracts like zero guaranteed working hours.
Then there was the startup that was in adtech and spied on people online. We were on the adblock easylist of trackers to block.
After that there was the gambling company… idk it just seems like every job has a morally grey component to it.
Edit: had an episode of John Oliver Last Week Tonight about my current company on air last week.
So, given your work history, where do you stand on the Clerks deathstar contractor debate?
One of our former bosses asked me to sign something clearly illegal. I told him NO. I am still here, the boss is a former boss.
I wish mine was that simple. I was asked to install our RMM (backdoor remote access tool) on a partners home personal computer. I said I didn’t feel comfortable doing this without her knowledge and without good reason. Wrote up a long email with explanation after I was told to do it anyway. The reply I got from the email was “you don’t get to make that decision, you’re going to get a bad review this year, do what you’re told.”
Luckily it took me about 2 weeks to find another job, and fully disclosed why I was leaving. Emailed everything to HR and left without warning, even told the partner their plan.
Left them scathing reviews on all platforms, HR even reached out about my reviews. Said “you didn’t care then, what’s changed”
A side quest of my life is to keep their reviews around 2.5 forever. I’ve got a dozen fake accounts to help already. Fuck them.
I always am of the belief that every employee of a company is complicit in its wrongdoings if they continue to work there knowingly. Companies can’t opperate without employees so the best way to make changes in them is for the workers to quit. Thats why i hate it when people defend customer service employees when their job is litterally to be the front face of the company towards its consumers.
My friend used to work at the call centre for Sky tv who are like a cable company in the UK. People phone up because they want to cancel and their job is to try to discourage them from cancelling for another few days. He left after convincing a legally blind lady to keep her tv subscription.
If going to push back don’t make it personal, that you are uncomfortable doing this. Change the focus to concern it would be putting the organization at risk of liability if we can’t provide the good or service. Potential to damage the relationship with an important customer and reduce revenue. CYA with documentation and good luck on the job search.
Tell them to fuck off, like I did a couple months ago.
Or tell them, you can go tell the customer they have a credit, because they made a mistake on the PO, or I will. Like I said a while ago.
Same job been there 6 years.
Ask your customer when they need it implemented by, because you don’t have a timeline for it. Is this a software feature that can be added to the existing devices? Send the quote, set realistic expectations.
If you fall on a sword for your customer, they might have a place for you while you look for something permanent. Or a reference for something good.
I think your best bet is to find a new employer. Definitely keep CYA documents as needed in the meantime, though.
I’ve quit jobs for ethical reasons. But I’m a carpenter, it’s easy to find a job in my field.
Do whta you can with the quote and ask the boss to finalize the parts where you are unsure and make sure you paper trailer the whole lot and make it explicitly clear why you are handing it over.
If the pricing is itemised, you could price the impossible feature at an exorbitant rate.
Either way, has your company previously sold this feature or is this just a mistaken belief about the existence of the feature that the customer has somehow invented themselves?
If the feature isn’t on any of the customer’s previous itemisations and they’re the ones who made it up accidentally, suddenly seeing it on a new itemisation with a sky-high price tag might make them realise without explicitly telling them, which may or may not be what you (as the individual) want. I assume your boss will get wind of this one way or the other, so you could get them on-side by suggesting this idea.
Is this feature something one of your company’s rivals might be able to implement or is this one of those situations where the feature would literally break the laws of physics? (Or mathematics, etc.) If the latter, it might be easier to come clean to the customer with a full explanation. If the former, your company needs to get on R&D immediately. Consult experts in the field. And that’s where the exorbitant rate comes in.
How much of this your company shares with the customer is down to your chain of command. How much you share with the customer is down to how much it will affect you personally one way or the other.
Lots of ifs, buts and maybes here. Good luck. I think you need it.
I already quit one job for that reason and refused to take a drug test for another job for the same reason (lol they decided they needed me enough to waive the drug test).
Time to update the resume.
If you’re already on shaky terms, this mess could be pinned on you and you’ll be out the door before you get a chance to pull up the paper trail leading to your boss.
In a less drop everything and run scenario, Is this feature a physical add-on or something done via software. Could always dig the hole deeper to stall for time and say parts are on backorder or someone key to implementing the feature is on sudden bereavement leave.
If I’m understanding correctly, you’ve not been selling the customer the additional feature but they think you have been and now your boss wants you to actually start billing them for the feature that they mistakenly think they are getting already but without actually providing the feature to them? Assuming that is correct it really does sound like fraud. Generally you can’t knowingly sell something you aren’t capable of selling but still collect the money. Even if the victim mistakenly thinks they got what they paid for you are still defrauding them of the money. I’m not a lawyer but I think if you do this you may end up needing a lawyer. Is there anyone else in the company besides your boss that you could talk to about this? The more people know about what is going on the harder it will be for your boss to pull of whatever he is trying to pull off. If something like this was going on where I work I would be documenting everything and sharing it with whoever would look at it, starting with my bosses boss. I wouldn’t make any accusations though, just present the facts and express your concerns.
