Had a Bad Week, but here to a better one

[www.sitepal.co.uk]

Hi

I have not posted for about a week.

I spent 5 days working on a audio production project and i am owed £2.000 and the guy has gone.

So a lesson learned is not to trust anyone even if you have done 2 or 3 jobs for them in the past.

Best

Tony

[Rob Holmes]

Hi Tony, Good to see you back.

Hmm - sorry to hear about your current loss - I'm sure it's not any consellation but we had a similar thing happen last week too (but for more money)

I hope this week is better for you!

Rob

[Ozzy]

Hi Tony,
If its any consolation our own government stung me for some £6,000 a couple years back. The department I was doing work for didn't get the funding required to continue the project so they pulled the plug overnight. Nice.

[SillyJokes]

Tony, I'm sure you wearing more clothes than that before - has something else happened you aren't telling us about?

[chris1317]

Sorry to hear about that, thats realy not nice especialy if you have done work for them before and you think you can trust them. I wory a lot that it is going to happen to me because I offer a service and the work is allways completed before I get payment.

Did you have a contract with them or anything like that so that you can try and chase them for the cash?

Chris.

[TechFox]

When I do work for someone I get a written 'go-ahead' meaning that if I complete the project they are legally obliged to pay.

[Jayne]

Hi Tony,

Glad you're still here. I too have had that happen when I did freelance work for a sign company (and a few others tried it). If you are small firm they know they can get away with it, it usually costs more to take them to the small claims court, with legal fees etc. than the money they owe you. They like to pray on one man bands. I never trust anyone now and always get the money up front, or ask them to leave a large deposit. Sometime a clever letter, threatening legal proceedings works, it's maybe worth a try.

Best Wishes

Jayne

[RSL]

Ended a contract with a client who wasn't very nice to me in the end...with no real reason...just turned funny...I'm owed a little over a grand and I'm really hoping I'll get paid! Though I inside I do feel that if I don't get paid I'll survive...maybe not financially (LOL) but I'll be here to fight another day! So keep your head up Tony...here's hoping you get the money you worked hard for! :-) HUG!

[americatelefon.com]

I spent 5 days working on a audio production project and i am owed £2.000 and the guy has gone.

Yeah, life is so unfair!
I've been triing to sell some VoIP equipment we don't use any more for a couple monthes. When I found a customer for the most expensive one, I thought "finally I'll sell it!" But I made a mistake by asking another person who works at our company to meet with the customer. The man who wanted to buy our equipment changed his mind cause our employee being not nice to him.
I worked so hard to find a customer who would need our used equipment, and now I lost him!

[www.sitepal.co.uk]

Tony, I'm sure you wearing more clothes than that before - has something else happened you aren't telling us about?

Sorry! forgot to put clothes on this morning

Best

Tony

[wilfredw]

Tony,

Do you normally ask for a deposit? If you are not sure about the client, demand that they pay 30 - 50 % upfront and other amounts as the project progresses.

Wilfred

[StoneLink]

Welcome Back, Tony!

One client owe's me £1500, since Feb and for a long period of time had vanished across the English Channel! I received a call today saying, that we will be payed in installments over the next few months!!!

Yeh, right... that's what I was told last year Nov... Lesson was quickly learned and it will never happen again...

Chin up buddy, the sun will shine again...

Best Wishes,
Nicholas
www.stonelinkcoaching.com
"every step of the way"

[daveashton]

LOL TechFox

My best pal works for the 10th largest legal company in the world and very early on he gave me some very simple advice.

Contracts are not worth the paper they are written on unless you have the time and money to enforce them and remember why you are focused on the legal’s what could you have done for your business that would make it money.

If people don’t pay us we just stop the service.

Tony welcome back

[Julie]

Sorry this has happened to you, Tony.

It seems as if you've struck a chord with people. I also have my bad debt story. A few years ago a business person whom I knew fairly well tried to avoid paying £6,000 but putting the invoices through another one of her businesses and then liquidating the company...

It was the first bad debt of my 20 years in business and I wasn't sure whether to 'throw good money after bad' and get a solicitor involved. In the end I decided I'd take the chance and the solicitor managed to get all the money paid, so it just cost me his fees. It took two years though...

Might be worth looking at your Terms & Conditions again, to see if there's anything you could write in to avoid this happening in future. That and looking again at your business practice. We both seem to have trusted people to do the right thing and pay, as do others in this thread. Maybe we should all be a bit more cynical!

Hope you manage to track him down...

Julie