Dear Friends,
I seek your valuable opinion on my case with an offline publishing company. I have received a call from one of the offline publishing company based on Ahmadabad for doing their typing work by me from home. They have sent me their leaflet describing their work to be done and terms and conditions. As per their main terms I have to maintain 65% accuracy in my work and have to complete the work as per the time limit given by them at the time of assigning the work. The work to be done in Notepad file format only no other file type such as MS word or any other programmes are not allowed in this work, if so they can cancel the work without any reason and not pay the project work amount.
As per above I have chosen their plan named Crystal, which is a plan of 250 pages project and has to be completed within 19 days from the assignment of work and the amount of work is Rs. 25,000/-. Registration amount for this project is Rs. 6900/- was paid prior to the agreement to be signed and Rs. 350/- was paid towards the cost of Stamp Paper and registration charges totaling Rs. 7250/- was paid to them online. Before making the above registration fee I asked the executive who contacted me for this work the sample pages of work to be done by me and they sent me two pages of scanned copy of files to be converted to Notepad file and also the converted file in Notepad. The two sample files were in English language only. Before making payment I also asked for the draft copy of agreement to be signed with me and their company, but she told me that they will not show the agreement before the registration money paid. I believed in her words and assumed them as a genuine company, paid the Registration Amount of Rs. 6900/- along with Rs. 350/- towards Stamp paper and registration charges. I told them to send me the agreement executed in Stamp paper once it being executed. During the course of signing of agreement they had allotted me work and sent me 250 pages of files through e-mail on 13-05-2014 and given me the date of submission of the project 01-06-2014 before 12.00 p.m. the files typed in Notepad on or before the stipulated time. As per their schedule I have submitted the files in their prescribed format and complied by all other terms and conditions in the agreement/ instructions given by them for this work.
After the start of work they sent me the scanned copy of executed agreement to me by e-mail on 14-05-2014. This agreement is on Plain Paper instead of it was made on a stamp paper for the expenses of stamp paper they have taken Rs. 350/- from me at the time of registration. Only the company's round seal affixed on with and its authorized employee is signed below each pages.
At the time of entering the work contract with them I was told and given the sample file in English language only and on seeing it I accepted to do the work and paid registration money of Rs. 6900/- and Rs. 350/- towards stamp paper and registration charges. But when they sent the scanned copy of image files to be converted to Notepad file out of five files one file contains 10 lines in French language, which is in special character fonts. But in note pad these characters are not available to do, and I cannot use any other programmes during the conversion of these files into Notepad format. In case I insert these fonts from MS word and paste it in Notepad file, they can reject it by saying that I had done the work in MS word and copied into Notepad and can reject my work on the basis of this, if I would not do as it is in the French language, then they can show these mistake as errors and escape from payment of my work amount. In total they were framed their agreement in accordance with the provisions of these things and send it to me after receiving the registration money from me and I have no option remained nothing else than signing it or lose the registration money paid to them.
After 10 days from the submission of my project they sent me an Inspection report showing the errors in some files with respective per centage of errors against each error according to their norms of errors out of 250 pages work sent to them by saying that my work is below 65% accuracy and is not eligible for the payment of Rs. 25,000/-. I objected this and send several e-mails regarding their refusal of my rightful money towards the work done by me, they cited the clauses of this Plain paper agreement and denied to pay me the due amount and cheated me. As these errors per page is below 20% as admissible error level is 35%.
In this case what I can do against this company who were cheated me and not paid no money for the work done by me and taken the money due to me from the people who have assigned them this work by quoting the clauses of this plain paper agreement. I would request you please give me your valuable advice in this matter so that I can do legal/criminal procedure against them. This company is a Private Limited registered company under companies act. Its registered office is at Ahmadabad, I am residing in Delhi. Also inform me whether I can lodge a complaint in Delhi court. I can share further details about this privately to those who can help me. Now they are saying they will send me the agreement in stamp paper after I questioned about the validity of this plain paper agreement sent to me on 14-05-2014. Please advise me whether I have to honor this agreement at this time or dishonor it.
