What if we all banded together, and the Big Behemoths suddenly realized that after 30 days the balance doubled?
Wait for the point here (there is one):
We used to use Neal Adams (Batman artiste extraordinaire) as a freelancer. He had a policy: “It gets delivered on time, or it’s half price”. Well, ol’ Neal NEVER made a deadline. And we came to expect that when “Continuity Studios”(his company) quoted us $6k, we were going to get it for 3. Score!
So our feeling as the deadline approached would be the same as we’ll feel waiting for a client to pay: “Pleeeeease don’t make the deadline… Yes! 31 days! We get twice the cash! I hope they wait til the 61st day and we’ll make quadruple! W00t!”
I was about to suggest this, but in reverse. Like a fine on the Docklands Light Rail: Here’s you’re fine, and if you shut up and pay within 30 days you only half to pay half. And then make the “full price” twice your current amount.
Make their cost of being late truly proportional to your annoyance at their being late, and you’ll stop caring about whether they’re late or not.
I’m a baker and our cafe does catering to businesses that meet in the library where we are located.
Some meet regularly, say, once a month. If they haven’t paid for the past two meetings, our manager won’t provide the food for the next meeting. Some have had the gall to get indignant about that. See, they can’t bring in their own stuff, so it’s pay up or go hungry.
A variation on this that also might help is “Discount of 2% if paid within ten days” or whatever. (Obviously, you jack up the initial price so that you don’t lose out.)
A friend of mine is an attorney whose entire career is spent getting people to pay up. She keeps several VERY good servers on contract (the folks who make sure that you received your notice of need to appear in court).
I am not a lawyer, but I don’t believe that’s sabotage. You own the machine; they have failed to pay you for it. If you have remote access, yiou would be well within your rights to shut it down, just as you could reclaim it as your property.
I work for a certain large food company. I hate to say that we do the same thing. I work as a project engineer and I have had many situations where I seriously want to pay the contractor but Corporate won’t let me. We have so much red tape that we have to go through just to get purchase orders cut and let alone actually paying that amount. Then we have to make sure that money comes out of the right buckets in the right year. I have three invoices on my desk right now that I have no way to pay because Corporate won’t let me pay on projects last years projects. That is one thing I really don’t like about the marketing focus where I work. We spend half the year doing nothing and the other half trying to complete projects that we should have spent 2 years on.
Ahhh. That makes sense. Fortunately I don’t think that’s the case for this client; I know the holidays weren’t as profitable as they used to be for this company, but I also know enough about how much they sold (and how much they put into advertising) that I’m pretty sure there’s no intention of closing up shop. 3K (the amount in question) is a fairly substantial figure to me, but I don’t think it is to them, especially in smaller payments.
It really has taught me a major lesson about dealing with clients. Even after lengthy working relationships, you still need a contract.
Although OTOH, the fact that we don’t have a contract may actually be in my favor, legally speaking, since I’m guessing my client’s attorney would’ve put some clause in stating that all assets (templates, graphics, copy, etc.) belong to the client upon delivery or some b.s. like that. Without a contract explicitly stating this, U.S. copyright law says that the copyright to all such items belongs to the creator, i.e. moi, unless specifically assigned/transferred to a company/another individual in writing (or unless the creator is an employee of a company).
But still this is a necessary lesson that I must handle my business matters (contracts, agreements & invoicing) better, and definitely will from now on.
I had a customer do a chargeback 3 months after receiving their order, lucky for me I had the delivery confirmation info from USPS AND copies of the emails where they raved about receiving it so googlecheckout covered it.
Then the long rambling emails sent at 4 am came in, where the customer said she was going through a divorce and needed the money and I was being such a shit and if I would just back off she would pay me my money as I earned it but right now I was hurting her and…yea. I should have filed a police report for fraud probably but I didn’t.
I’m not a lawyer either, but I’ve been told by one (many years ago) not to do this under similar circumstances. You can cut off support, you can refuse or suspend any future or current work, but you can’t touch equipment that’s already been delivered. So drachillix, you should probably consult an actual lawyer before doing this.
Although I have sincere and deep sympathy for the OP and all in the same situation and don’t think that being cheated out of your rightful earnings is any laughing matter, I just have to say:
pikey peter Pitted prickish petty pikers.
Sorry, but that’s been going through my head ever since the damn thread opened. Now that I’ve written it down, I hope it will stay here and quit bothering me.
(And I do know that that’s not exactly the OP’s real username. That’s the worst part.)
Deadbeat clients are a huge pet peeve of mine. I send them to a collection agency early in the process, but I also prominently display warnings about this(payment due when services rendered, any unpaid accounts sent to collection, etc).
Years ago, when I still had a home land-line and a listed number, I had a frantic phone call. Someone was trying to get a mortgage and I showed up on their credit report. They wanted me to drop what I was doing, accept their payment, and write a letter explaining it was a misunderstanding.
I explained that there was noway that would happen. I turned them over to collection two years prior the phone call. I would get 0% of the payment, the collection agency would get it all. “But what about our mortgage?” “Fuck You.”
Could you even remove them at this point? We’ve turned a lot of people over to collections (I don’t know that anyone has ever called us later about it, these are all rent-skippers who you never hear from again), and my understanding is at that point the standard contract with the collection agency basically makes it so only they can do anything like that.
When you freelance, always charge a decent portion up front, always always always. You never put the ball in their court, and if they can’t deal with it, tough. Having a basic contract = even better.
They were asking (at the suggestion of their real estate agent) for a letter from me stating that the original debt situation was a misunderstanding. In exchange for the letter, they would pay the amount due, plus whatever I wanted for my time.
If they could afford what I would have wanted for my time, they wouldn’t be needing a mortgage to purchase a home.
Gord used to run a game store, in which he sold new and used games, and rented out games and consoles. And he had any number of people who would rent a game and not return it. And not return his phone calls, either.
He would hear from these people when they heard from the collection agency, or when they found that they couldn’t get a loan. Oh, what he would hear.
My company (independent software developer) gets requests for product all the time. Can we have net 30? Can you just invoice us, send the product and we’ll pay at some unspecified time in the future?
99% of the time, the answer to this is “no”. It’s just not worth us having to hound and chase, even for big purchases, if it’s just a one-time payment. We do make exceptions (particularly educational institutions, because they actually pay up).
Oh but I need an invoice to get funding. Sure, here it is. Great, so when do I get the product? When you pay for it. Oh.
Oh but I’m good for it. Your one-man, just started business you run out of your own home? That you can’t even get a company card for? Sure, let’s extend credit to you when no-one else will.
Oh, this is how we buy everything. That’s nice, but I’m sure someone there has a credit card. Let them take the risk of the company paying them back. Oh, you don’t want to because it takes like 8 months of heavy nagging and filling out bureaucratic forms? Guess what, we don’t want to do that either.
