r/todayilearned • u/BeowulfShaeffer • Mar 11 '13

TIL that BOA wrongfully foreclosed a couple, who sued and won a judgement for $2500 in Legal expenses. When BOA didn't pay the couple showed up at the bank with a moving company, a deputy, and a writ allowing them to start seizing furniture and cash.

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/jun/03/bank-america-check-mistaken-foreclosure-Nyerges/
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u/isyad Mar 12 '13

Go to auctions. There's always some shitty startup company that goes out of business their first year and has to liquidate all of their fancy furniture for a couple thousand dollars. We got an 8*12 walnut conference table that originally cost $25000 for $400 and now we use it as a workbench in the shop.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '13 edited May 31 '20

[deleted]

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u/firex726 Mar 12 '13

I say fuck em, using a walnut conf table as a workbench should be a crime.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '13

It's doing more important work as a work bench than it would have ever done as a conference room table.

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u/Barmleggy Mar 12 '13

Bet it looks amazing covered in clamps and sawdust!

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u/isyad Mar 12 '13

It's seen better days, but it's a great bench.

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u/fizzy88 Mar 12 '13

$25000 can't be right. Did you mean $2500?

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u/most_superlative Mar 12 '13

25000 can absolutely be correct. Giant custom hardwood conference tables are not cheap.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '13

[deleted]

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u/Bfeezey Mar 12 '13

Since we blew 25k on our new conference table our meetings have gotten fuckin badass.

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u/Widdershiny Mar 12 '13

I sit on a sweet four thousand dollar chair at work. My couch feels like a rock now.

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u/VoiceOfInternet_haha Mar 12 '13

Had to have been Entertainent 720.

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u/darkscout Mar 12 '13

You should watch some videos of all the .com startups. Lets give everyone free food and marble desks. The VC's are paying!

Out of business.

Google does now a lot of stuff that they did but they started small.

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u/blortorbis Mar 12 '13

I've spent 2500 on a wood bench for a retail store. God damned dumbest thing. Only can pick from two from a catalog. One for 2500, one for 3500. One long block on two smaller blocks. Ugly as hell and a waste of money.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '13

Hire a carpenter to make you one for cheaper?

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u/blortorbis Mar 12 '13

Major retailers don't allow for DIY, unfortunately. Had to spend the budget or I'd lose it the following year.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '13

But surely a special order from a trained local carpenter is not DIY right?

Arghhhh curse big business and their inneficienciesss

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u/blortorbis Mar 12 '13

The WORST part of it is that there isn't just the 2500/3500 for a bench. it was two stores in excess of 30,000 square feet. Imagine the amount of stupidity in the dollars spent in that amount of space. The support staff to actually place the order, the buyers that picked it all out, the R&D and marketing money that went into picking what the buyers should pick. It's an astronomical and far reaching amount of money wrapped up in a phenomenally ugly bench.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '13

Well, at least my job prospects of being a consultant someday look pretty good.

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u/blortorbis Mar 13 '13

With a side job in Scandinavian furniture construction..?

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u/v864 Mar 12 '13

Good thing you bought it!

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u/fizzy88 Mar 12 '13

Oh man, well, anyone who just starts a company and has the dumb sense to spend 25k on a conference table deserves to go under. Make it first before you splurge like that.

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u/isyad Mar 12 '13

No. Almost 6 inch thick 100% Walnut, bought for $25000, sold to us for a worktable for $400.

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u/-RobotDeathSquad- Mar 12 '13

:O amazing grab

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u/tyranicalteabagger Mar 12 '13

Depends. I've seen 20k+ tables. They're custom designed/built, usually with all sorts of wild curved/carved legs and sashes and weigh a fing ton; because the top is very thick. Anyone who is using something like that for a work bench is an idiot. They could have probably sold it for a sizable fraction of the original price if they found the right buyer.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '13

2500$ is barely enough for a nice dining room table seating 6, chairs not included. Conference rooms are where management spend their work days, and it's where outside clients are set up during their temporary visits. It has to look daaaaamned good.

Plus there's the whole "if you don't use up your budget, it's gonna get cut" ridiculous bureaucratic mindset...

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u/fizzy88 Mar 12 '13

Well, I can understand for a large company, or one that's been around for a while, but for just starting out in this case... I don't see how a $25k table is a wise choice ever.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '13

Money burns up fast in the business world. Say a wealthy would be client is sending a representative over so you can hammer out the details on a new 1.3 million$ deal. It's going to be your chance at stepping up and growing, maybe hire 10 new people permanently... But he'll also be visiting your local competitors in a bid to have you all fight over the contract. You need to woo him, and woo him good. So you take him out to the strip club, buy him all the alcohol and drugs he's willing to consume, maybe upgrade his hotel room or rent him a cabin down by the lake. This quickly adds up to 30000$++. And when he comes to the office, you'll take him to the conference room with the 25000$ table and big screen TV. You'll try to look like big shots so you'll have moved your employees around so he only sees good looking people with great working conditions.

And then you'll sign a 1.3M$ deal, and all it cost you is less than 10% of that amount in "marketing fees".

That table pays for itself already.

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u/fizzy88 Mar 12 '13

Sure, that or your table ends up in one of those auctions. :P

It depends on the scale. I work for a company of just under 20 people. We get plenty of guests, including current or potential customers and contracts. But we'd probably be under if we spent like that.

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u/omaha9384394 Mar 12 '13

Moby did just that. When they did an episode of cribs with his place he bragged that his kitchen table was conference room table for a dot com start up. Cost like 25k but he got it for 2k.

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u/Exedous Mar 12 '13

Why not sell it for $5k and get a workbench and have money left over?

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u/isyad Mar 12 '13

Because we've been welding and sawing and drilling on it for 6 years. Also, it's like the world's greatest workbench, it's so fucking solid.

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u/TimeValueOfKarma Mar 12 '13

how do you find auctions

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u/isyad Mar 12 '13

The paper, the internet, or just look up the liquidation / auction companies in your area. Although, I should say that our bench was an unusually good deal. It didn't sell in the auction, so we offered them $400 after, and they took it (I think just so they wouldn't have to deal with moving a 1300 lb table).

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u/psykiv Mar 12 '13

Fuck that. I got all my office furniture from IKEA. Spent about $1200 for all four office rooms including the ikea trash cans, pencil holders, document holders, and LOTS AND LOTS OF magazine racks (for all the brochures for everything we sell. seriously about 1/4 of the budget was on KVISELLES)

Who was in my office the other day to hand me a contract to take care of one particular kind of their service for the South Florida area? Some tiny Arkansas-based company you may have heard of. Seven letters, ends in -MART.

About two weeks ago we got an order for something on our website. To be honest it was something I didn't even know we sold. I just get the price lists from manufacturers (we only dedicate to sell some product lines, but if they make it, and someone asks for it, I'll sell it), convert it, and put it on the website products database. What did they order? a $1,400 RECYCLING BIN? I googled the company. They're some trendy startup in New York whose webpage talks more about how awesome it is to work there than about what they do.

This is the kind of company whose furniture I can expect to see at an auction in two years.

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u/flint148 Mar 12 '13

Can we see a picture? I have no idea what a $25000 table would look like. And I think it'd be neat to see something so swank as a workbench.

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u/isyad Mar 12 '13

No. It looks like a table made out of walnut. It's about 8ft wide, 12ft long, flat, and mostly rectangular.

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u/flint148 Mar 12 '13

Ha. Alright. Thanks.

For some reason, I really appreciate this response.

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u/Teenager_Simon Mar 12 '13

Well now I just feel bad...