This is how 99% of business is done. Virtually everyone is billed for goods and services. Even new customers! A company will run a credit check on another company and establish terms on the first order. Payment in advance is for known deadbeats only.
From the picture, if they had been desperate for the product, then they would have taken it anyway.
My suspicion is that Jjim is right, and a subordinate is trying to appease an irate boss.
That picture looks dubious, my guess is that the trucker fell for the charms of a rather attractive girl.
For $6,000 I could airfreight that quantity of glass wool from the UK, and make a healthy profit.
I’m sorry, I’m not seeing the carnage. Could you elaborate> I’m expecting piles of ripped and stained fabric. All I see are rolls of something neatly wrapped in covers.
Unfortunately, there’s no way for us to know if or how much things are damaged until we take the bags off and investigate. Based on the pictures, about half of the material is at least partially out of its bag, which means that it is in contact with dirt and debris, the ends are likely crushed so that the material cannot be unrolled, and the cores may be damaged or broken.
Or it might all be fine.
You can’t see from that picture, but there are 40 rolls in the truck, so it’s a considerable amount of fiberglass.
That really is a conundrum. I work as an accounts payable clerk, so my perspective is from that of the customer ordering the goods. If our receiver would not accept the goods because they were damaged, I would not be paying that invoice, period. We would normally pay to ship it back, but that depends on the situation. Paying thousands of dollars because the shipping company screwed up? I wouldn’t be paying that invoice, either. We would, however, be paying for the shipping and the invoice on the replacement order.
Bottom line - I wouldn’t pay any of these invoices right away. My supervisor would be in negotiations with the supplier to figure out what happened and who is going to pay for what, and we would probably end up splitting the shipping costs 50/50.
Sorry, DMark, but the standard in business is to open an account with a reference check of current suppliers done, and pay invoices within 30 days. Very few companies require payment before shipping once the account is opened with good references. Of course, the other side of that is, if you screw your suppliers, they give you a bad reference, and no one will extend credit to you in the future. A new company is usually given a very low credit limit until they’ve proven themselves.
Thanks…I stand corrected, but it still seems like a very dangerous policy unless you are a large company that can eat the loss.
If I had, for instance, DMark’s Flat Screen TV’s and sold them on-line, you can damn well bet I would want that $6,000 in my account before shipping off the television, no matter how good their credit rating is.
In either case, someone is being extended credit by someone. Visa takes a chance every time it issues a card. It’s how business is done, be it an individual or a company. Very few people deal in cash.
It works both ways though. If your TV shipment is late or otherwise substandard, then you aren’t getting 6 grand. Companies have always dealt this way.
As is obvious, I do not have a business…however, as Joe Consumer, there are few, if any, places that send me goods without me paying in advance.
Business to business - yeah, I guess that is another ball of wax and you deal with the client differently, but still - I can remember working for a company that sold sandpaper and they had a few clients that had to pay in full before any deliveries were made, but you guys are right - for the most part, they would ship the order and get payment after it arrived. And some of those bills for sandpaper were over $6,000.
We have a couple of customers who climb into the 100-200 thousand dollar credit line. Since we generally sell by the truckload, anything less creditwise really isn’t feasible.
It actually is a dangerous but necessary policy, which companies know and take steps to minimize. Credit makes the business world go 'round - we buy our supplies on 30 day terms, our customers pay us on 30 day terms. It works fine when everyone honours the agreements.
There is still a surprising amount of “gentleman’s agreements” in business at this point - with the understanding that as a business, if you screw other businesses too badly, you’ll be blackballed credit-wise and end up screwing yourself. A customer who doesn’t pay on time gets their account closed permanently; if we don’t pay our suppliers, they close our account. Trying to do business without credit accounts would be, well, the word “crippling” comes to mind.
Have you ever bought a home or a new car? Do you have a credit card? There are entire industries built around allowing Joe Consumer to make large purchases without having the cash up front. The only difference is that Joe goes to a bank to get credit instead of working directly with the vendor.