Winding up

It is with a heavy heart I am writing this week to tell you that I have become the latest victim of the financial downturn that has hit this country. As I told you in my last post, Milo our chocolate lab has got a problem with his eye. The vet's bills from that have added up to just short of £1,000. That wouldn't have been a problem if Sainsbury's Pet Insurance had paid out on time as they have in the past. This time they have been messing about asking for Milo's full medical history although they have known him as long as we have had him, sending the claim forms back for more information that they had already been given and acting as though we were making a fraudulent claim. This has caused both us and our vet some serious heartache because we (and our vet) don't see our pets as financial liabilities which is why we have insurance on them. However at a time like this the pet's needs come first and we argue with the insurance company later.

I always try to carry a float so that if something like this goes wrong I can pay the bills as they come in and chase insurance companies later but this time my float has been eroded by one of our other pets having a huge abscess on her jaw at the same time - more vet's bills. Again normally the float covers all these things but recently I have been having cash flow problems with customers being very slow to pay their invoices so I have been borrowing from Peter to pay Paul so to speak.

The crunch came when we had to cancel our holiday because I needed the money to pay the vet. Some of our slowest payers were on holiday having a good time and sending me email requests and instructions for more work together with photos of themselves enjoying their break. This was the straw that broke the camel's back because when I started working with computers my wife had said that she didn't mind what I did as long as my activities didn't effect the bills being paid and our family life wasn't curtailed by them. Having to cancel the holiday we both badly need was seen as my activities doing just that.

Omega Cottage will close for new business on 1st September. I will miss the work and the friends I have made in the years I have been trying to help folk to get the best out of their computers. It is going to be a wrench stripping down and selling off the infrastructure I have enjoyed so much building here in my study but there is no point keeping more than a single computer as I will not need the servers and Macs I have now to do the bit of web surfing and maintenance on my personal web site.

Thanks to all of you who have been customers and friends down through the years, I will miss you.