I see my posting are getting read and my recommendations are not getting ignored. Some people like make themselves more important, than they are. They use some ideas, which they have read from my blog or postings and try to use it.
One of them is "leading" a "big" call center with more than 1000 seats. By chatting with such a person, you get it immediately that have only a basic education (they are not guilty for it) and try to copy the ideas of other without trying to get the full knowledge.
They are calling themselves business man or business woman, but they even not know the requirements and the law situation in their own business. They have been even too lazy, to inform themselves about the requirements and result of such an idea. For this it has been coming to the following funny situation:
This is a part of a communication by using Skype:
He/she: we always notarize every document to be secure.
Me: I'll search here notary office and let it certify
He/she: no need Rudolf. We will do it as one of my partners in our Firm is a Lawyer.
Me: I don't know how they can certify there my signature. A notary confirmed signature has to be given in front of a notary. There you need to show a valid ID too. Otherwise you don't get a certification.
He/she: let me consult that with my partner and let you know about it.
Together with the schedule of the meeting, which should be 2 days later, I got the message:
He/she: Please send back the signed NDA that I have sent you as the document to be notarized and Client will not approve the meeting without the signed NDA. This is to meet the expectation. Thank you.
There are a lot of mistakes and misunderstandings:
- A notary’s office is not a law firm.
- Compare it by yourself. The definition of a public notary is found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notary_public. The definition of a lawyer is found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawyer
- A notary can only confirm in such a case a given signature. The signature has to be done in front of the notary and the signer needs to authenticate himself. For this the signer has to go to the notary’s office by himself. A document or contract will even get registered from the notary including his confirmation in the public register, which makes it viewable to all, which are interested in it.
- A document, which should be kept secret, cannot get confirmed by a notary, because the notary needs to publish it for the case that someone needs to verify it. For this it does not make any sense to sign a NDA in front of a notary. The content of the NDA and the maybe possible contract will get published by the notary and lose by doing this his secret!
- Such a document has to get transmitted in original. A copy sent by email does not help. I think a lot of people know how to use Photoshop. The snail mail (traditional post) will not be so fast transmitted from one province to another in 2 days. So the appointment of the given date cannot get fulfilled, because the recipient will not receive it in time.
- In this case are companies from other countries involved. Documents, which need to get the power of attorney need to get legalized too. The legalizing process needs a lot of time, especially if the contractor is not living in the capital of his country. You need to go through all instances of your country for confirming the previous instance until you have reached the ministry of foreign affairs of your country. After this you have to go to the embassy of the country where the document should be valid. This embassy confirms the signature of the ministry of foreign affairs. After this you can send the document to your business partner. Your business partner has to take this document to the ministry of foreign affairs of his country. There he gets the confirmation of the signature of the embassy in your country. The document is not valid before all this steps are done. The document will be valid only for these countries, for which it got legalized. Don’t forget that each confirmation will cost you some money and a lot of time.
A full description of legalizing documents will get found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalization_(international_law)
The best is coming at the end, where I said NO to the project:
I asked: Maybe you tell us the promotion for the project before everybody needs to run to a notary office. I think the country, the kind of sale, commission, payment terms, inbound/outbound and if data, scripts, etc will get provided or not will not be top secret.
The answer has been: Hi Rudolf, all info is in the SOW. NDA's purpose is to make sure that you will not disclose any information to other parties that might mislead. We protect the interest of the Client and the information it self. Hope you understand. Just sign the NDA and send it to me. See you later. Thank you.
I dropped the call center campaign as I don't waste time for any unknown business, where I even don't know the surroundings like inbound or outbound work, payment terms, data and scripts provided by client, kind of product, etc. With other words, everything what you get on information from a broker.
if such an information is already top secret, then can it be only a crime.