Most of the firms who've been left holding the bag by troubled tech companies don't want to talk about their woes, fearing it will scuttle what little chance they may have of collecting even a fraction of the money that they're due. "Whining to the press about how we got stung won't help our chances of getting paid back," says one architect who is owed a combined $700,000 by two downsizing dot-coms that hired his company to remodel their office space last year.

To be sure, such service providers are in a tough spot. While most landlords can move against a failed tenant's letter of credit or other security to collect at least a portion of what they're owed, architects, marketing firms and the like rarely have such fallbacks.

Suing isn't necessarily a viable alternative. Even if a firm is willing to incur the time and expense of going to court, the best many can hope for is to be placed in the same line as a slew of the failed dot-com's other creditors.