HOME

OUR STORY
PAYMENTS
WHAT HAPPENED
EWONCALLS
YOUR FEEDBACK

LETTERS
O = out, I = in

MEDIA

COMPLAINTS
LODGE
OMBUDSMAN
MANAGEMENT

ABOUT
EWON
RIGHTS
ENERGY LAW

LEGAL ACTION

COMPLAINTS
HOTLINE
(02) 8825 6119

Fax (02) 9853 5184

Monday, February 05, 2001

Dear Mr Draper and Mr Walker.

We are in receipt of your fax dated 5 February 2001 with regards to our claim against your corporation.

We read you are not yet in a position to form a view as to your liability. Mr. Draper has expressed this on several occasions, as has Mr. Walker, since Thursday. Can you please provide a deadline date as to when you will be able to confirm or deny liability.

Liability need only at this time extend to the "cause" and fact that your Field Engineer carried out the action we claim. Liability to "affect and damage" is a separate issue.

We tend to feel that by tomorrow morning (Tuesday 6 February) you should have well established your liability in relation to the "cause" of this matter.

We therefore request that you provide written confirmation or denial of your acceptance of the "cause" prior to any further interruption or investigation.

Upon acceptance of liability we recommend that an "affect and damages" investigation commence.

In relation to your paragraph 2, we did not state Mr. Draper gave any unconditional guarantee of financial assistance. We have not at any time asked for financial assistance.

Mr. Todd requested a prompt compensation resolution that would minimise any ongoing costs to be brought against you in any claim for damages. You have refused to minimise this period by your own actions. Mr. Todd attempted to reduce as much as possible the losses and costs to all parties whilst maintaining the high standard and quality of service provided by this company to it’s clients.

Mr. Draper did state that our company should take all reasonable and necessary steps to return our resources to operational and stable status prior to the incident on 1 February at approximately 16:46. Mr. Draper even asked quite bluntly why the company did not just go out and purchase all the necessary resources on Friday and then send the bill to Integral Energy.

Mr. Draper statement is without doubt a direction by himself to encourage or require us to take actions.

We can hardly be expected to shut down our business and wait for your corporation to work out what it will do. Especially if it’s going to take what is now five days to assess your engineers statement.

Mr. Draper was told specifically that standby and rotating shift staff would be deployed and without hesitation he agreed to that option indicating that the claim being rather large would take time to come to fruition. Mr. Draper agreed that if this was necessary then it would form part of the claim.

We understand you can not agree to payment of the invoices at this time, but none the less, Mr. Draper does need to know what the costs of the claim will be and the ongoing administration of the management of this problem. We will provide daily invoices for staffing costs until such time as the environment is stable. This will enable us to seek liquidated damages in the future.

In paragraph three, you elude to an assumption that we refused to allow Integral to make an assessment. We note that your Assessor Mr. Emmerson did not keep his appointment, made by you, without consultation with Mr. Todd (who was suppose to be on a clients site at 2 PM) even though at 2 PM Mr. Walker stated Mr. Emmerson would be attending the site irrespective.

Mr. Todd left the premises at 16:15 (the time Mr. Draper was suppose to call Mr. Todd to exchange details as was arranged in a conversation with Mr. Draper at 15:01.

This concludes that we have never refused to grant Integral the opportunity to access the damage. Mr Todd pressed heavily for this to take place on Friday afternoon in a telephone conversation with Mr. Draper. This was rejected by Mr. Draper. Again, it was your corporation that has stalled any potential quick and financially minimising resolution to this problem.

Further we do not believe Integral needs to be granted any access to anything to assess the "cause" of the damage. It was your employee who attended the site and we do not hold him under house arrest. You can make your causation assessment in your own time at cost to you.

The reinstatement costs were considerably smaller prior to the weekend. Mr. Todd was determined to solve the problem by the weekend so that engineering staff were not required to be on standby, thus limiting any costs.

This could have been facilitated by Integral Energy had you and your management chosen to be cooperative and enter into negotiations. However at every option put forward by Mr. Todd, you have declined the offer to negotiation a resolution.

Mr. Todd took considerable effort to find and source equipment that would in fact be suitable on short notice at special rates. Much of this equipment, albeit second hand, is now not available due to the nature of these items and their turnover. However in some cases new items might surface. Again you will be billed for any equipment purchased to replace any suspect or damaged equipment. We have sent one such bill.

We have no hesitation in letting a mutually agreed engineer make a technical assessment of the technical resources, their potential suspect status and their potential future operability. However a suitable engineer will need to be selected. That engineer will need to have an extensive knowledge and be able to explain the affect of certain causes on IT equipment.

We have researched your selection Mr. David Pattison and find him unsuitable. His company seems to be focused on educational media material specialising in History and Archaeology. It appears he may have created the web site, although it is a virtually hosted site on the servers of an ISP with whom Mr. Todd has had consultations.

Mr. Pattison’s CV reads as a rather polished document written by a University graduate. Our company policy states that we will not employ university graduates as most lack aptitude and experience and frequently understanding of the technology they are to work with. A review of the CV and Mr. Pattisons web site,

(http://www.astarte.com.au/About_Astarte_Resources/
Ordering_Information/Astarte_Order_Form/
The_Astarte_People/the_astarte_people.html#David)

tends to indicate Mr. Pattison is very new in Internet Technologies with the recent deployment of the business domain name and web site.

Something that lacks a lot of luster that millions of people do every day. Mr. Todd consults to these people at a rate of $396 an hour. In fact records show that Mr. Todd has provided quotations for services to Astarte previously.

We’ve conducted an extensive search of web sites, industry reviews and notices and find no references to Mr. Pattison at all. A search using goeurka, an Australia Search engine, brings back the Astarte web site with references to the pages last being updated on 21-October 1904.

This causes us to laugh a little. A Professional would ensure their time-codes are correct in an IT industry – especially where Mr. Pattison claims to have been responsible for Industrial Automation systems! We conclude Mr. Pattison either uses a non Y2K complaint PC with a bios that has fallen back to 1900 or he has little care about making sure his work is accurate and presentable.

Upon discussion with corporate associates, we have decided to reject Mr. Pattison. His background doesn't extend into low level networking and deployment, the fundamental electronics necessary to make the technology work and nor does his CV show any specific degree of knowledge about low level circuit design. He is also unknown.

We offer Integral, again, an option that might lead to an acceptable solution. Mr. Patterson will need to contact Mr. Ross Wheeler of Albury Local Internet for a telephone interview.

Mr. Wheeler is independent and honest. He has been before the Federal Court as a witness for Telecommunications and Internet matters. His history, credentials and experience are rated as one of the highest in Australia, the United States and France. Mr. Todd can arrange for the telephone interview to take place. To consider acceptance of Mr. Pattisons appointment this would be a mandatory first step, but does not guarantee any acceptance by our company.

Mr. Todd offers the following list of independent and very knowledgeable people who may be willing to help Integral assess the affect and reinstatement requirements of our resources.

1. Mr. Ross Wheeler of Albury Local Internet Pty Limited.
2. Mr. Mark Russell of Viper Communications Pty Limited
3. Mr. Michael Kovalik independently consulting.
4. Mr. Darren Worley and Ideal Internet Pty Limited

Each have extensive backgrounds in IT&T, most have extensive electronics background and most have had numerous media coverage over the last 5 years. All are respected within the Internet, Electronics and/or IT Industry.

In Paragraph four you make referance to Economic Loss. We have not at this stage indicated we will be claiming costs for loss of business. Other than those costs associated with resolving the issues and actions of your employee.

It is fortunate that Mr. Todd was able to explain the situation to clients. There are concerns about loss of connectivity and unreliability caused by your employees negligence and incompetence. We are trying, through the use of 24 x 7 rotating rosters, to ensure clients have limited interruptions or increase in costs.

This is being billed to you as part of the ongoing charges since Friday afternoon. As such there will be no need to assess this companies financial records and statements.

If you insist on a loss of revenue direction for the claim, we will require a full disclosure reports on the financial status and financial allocations of Integral Energy to decide if in fact Integral has the financial capacity to support our claim and any legal action we may chose at that stage of this settlement. Be aware that the costs associated with producing reports at your request will be charged to you and must be paid in advance of the reports being provided.

You request an early response in your final paragraph. As you can see, our early response is within a few hours of your fax.

We expect you will address the issues and questions raised above, in particular your acceptance of the "cause" of liability. It seems pointless expecting us to administer the collation and aggregation of documents to present to you if you aren’t going to accept the "cause" of liability.

Once you accept "causation" things become reasonably negotiable, especially anything from the time you state acceptance of liability. Mr. Todd is a very efficient and very fast coordinator and will minimise labor and resource costs dramatically once a direction and option is available.

To paraphrase, if you accept the liability and offer an immediate financial compensation that will remedy the need to provide of 24 x 7 shift rosters, it will greatly reduce the costs associated with our future claim against you. These costs are only going to in increase the longer you take to accept liability.

However should you deny liability then the courts will be required to make a determination, again increasing your costs and liability.

We hope we have made our position abundantly clear, in so much as you have adamantly made your position abundantly clear by denying content of telephone conversations, some of which were witnessed.

We hope we have clearly indicated that we have done nothing to increase costs, and done everything possible to reduce the costs associated with our claim against you.

The timing was bad. Had it been a week earlier things may have been a little different. However the underlying fact is, it should never have happened at all.

If you have any further issues relating to this matter they should be addressed to the Chief Executive Officer, Breakfast Bytes Pty Limited, PO BOX 174 Roseville NSW 2069 and sent by fax to 02 8825 6199 who will ensure that Mr. Todd provides as an immediate response as possible.

Sincerely,