Customer Credit and Late Payment Fees

I can with cause. More importantly the order is non-cancelable, non-returnable, so if they want to cancel I can bill them "reasonable" amounts which allows for time and money involved not to mention profit.

I don't think it is quite that simple. Certainly that is not in my best interest. Much better to hold them to specific performance of the PO.

I don't know if you've read the entire thread or not. Of course the title to the goods is not important if the goods are not shipped. The issue is being able to lay claim to the goods after they are shipped, but not paid for in a reasonable time. I have zero interest in recovering the goods as they are not useful to anyone else, but by retaining title to the goods the units they are installed into can not be delivered to their client. That was why they would not agree to that. Bankruptcy is not the issue here although that is certainly a consideration in some cases. I will remember that.

Is all this drama really over just discovering that companies sometimes stretch payments past net 30?

bullshit and say your shipping rates went up, move on.

Nah... I don't charge shipping. They provide a FedEx account number. I'm doing this by the book!

It wasn't GEC but a closely related spin off UK hitech company using bean counters cut from the same cloth. They were regularly on the stop list of two out of three of Farnell, Lock Distribution and RadioSpares.

+1

You really have to decide what you want and think carefully about all of the consequences of your actions. You may be legally able to enforce the contract but you could well incur more expense and loss of goodwill from doing that than you will gain in cash. Don't forget the time and effort.

You have a great aptitude for including a lot of extraneous detail without explaining what the actual situation is and what remedy you are trying to obtain. On the face of it their offer to pay pro-rata by the day might be countered by rounding up to the nearest week to settle it.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the larger companies that actually pay up on time. That is why I have such a clear stated policy of no further work if there are unpaid invoices past their dues date.

Getting lawyers involved will only make them dig their heels in and they probably have in house ones well used to fending off such claims if they are anything like the organisation I used to work for.

I have only ever done it once and that was quite interesting to reclaim our goods from a warehouse of a dealer that had gone bankrupt without paying for them. The most memorable thing about it was that for some reason it involved invoking the high court and Sheriff of Nottingham!

I suggest you concentrate on that then rather than picking a fight with your customer *and* their customer in addition. The goodwill or bad feelings that you create can come back to haunt you long afterwards.

People that you have annoyed will never do business with you again and will tell around a dozen others their tale of woe. If you have run into a retaliator it could be even worse - they are much bigger than you.

Figure out what you want and express it much more clearly!

This works both ways! Screw someone over "because you can" and THEY won't do business with you, either. And, they will be more than happy to tell others that you could potentially screw, in the future (possibly as alternatives to "you"!) so those folks take measures to minimize the effects of such a screwing (e.g., insist on cash up front).

I had a client "express displeasure" with some of my work. After the demo, he grumbled "Pack it up" which I took to mean, "We're done, here!"

Fine. I can't (and won't) try to alter your opinion as I may not know what "other" issues you are facing (maybe today was just a bad day and you wanted to take it out on me?)

I opted not to bill him for the last month of work (~$25K) and went on my way.

A few weeks later, he called, all cheery and wanted to know when we could meet to get started on the REST of the project...

"Um, I don't work for you anymore."

"Huh?"

"Remember?"

"Oh, *that*???"

"Yes. I've already signed another contract..."

[Hey, I'm not under any obligation to sign another contract with *him*! You'll note that he never mentioned the fact that he'd not received an invoice for that last $25K...interesting omission, eh?]

I find it funny that people continue to talk about "loss of goodwill" when I have explained there is no goodwill issue. This CM is a lame duck and the goodwill between us was lost long ago. This will not take any "resources" to win because they need me to ship product and they have no basis for not paying according to the terms in a document signed by official representatives in all three companies. This issue is making them look bad to their customer over a few hundred dollars.

LOL! You don't understand the relationship between this customer and my company, then when I try to explain it you complain about extraneous information. I have explained the matter is full detail and exactly what I hope to achieve. The customer has signed a document of Terms and Conditions including 30 days credit and 2% late fees. The customer wants to pay late and not pay the late fees. I want them to pay on time or to pay the full 2% late fees. Sounds pretty simple to me. What part don't you understand?

Fortunately this does not involve bankruptcy and I won't be extracting any goods because they have and will continue to pay the invoices. So that information is completely extraneous to the conversation.

I'm very confident the in house lawyers will say pay the late fees and rebuke this person for bringing this petty matter before them. I expect the delay at this point is because she is jumping through hoops to get the invoices paid on time.

Ok, so you are just not going to read what I provided to you. Ok, but that means you have no valid view of what is going on. This issue *IS* about saving every penny. Right now the late payment fee is $1,000, give or take. There will probably some 100 such late payments during the course of this order, or $100,000. Does that have your attention now? It has mine.

You really refuse to read what I have written.

Perhaps you can point to the parts I wrote that you don't understand.

Do you want to kill any chance of getting new design work from them?

How do you kill something that doesn't exist. This company never asked me to design anything. You should pay attention to the thread. They are a middle man, a contract manufacturer. They are also on the way out the door being replaced by another CM at the end of the year, which is why there is pressure to get things done. Not my problem. They gave me difficulties all along because "that's not how we operate". Now I have the option of holding their feet to the fire and getting them to do what it says in the agreement.

Yeah, I don't care what they think. They want to save pennies by making me their bank. So I'm treating them as my ATM.

On Wednesday, October 13, 2021 at 12:29:56 AM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: ?

Whatever. There's nothing like shooting your feet both off. Thee company using the boards may need some work done, and I'm sure that the CM will tell them about you.

The company using the boards signed the Terms and Conditions along with the two of us. The procurement director of my "customer" called the guy in charge of these projects at their customer (who I consider to be my real customer) and I could tell he felt very foolish as he "explained" the mechanics of the payment process and tried to tell me it was not paying late by intent, it was just the timing of my invoice and there payment schedules. I asked him under what conditions it would pay before the 30 day dead line. No answer. He had zero animosity about this.

I did receive an email saying they would pay the 2% and would pay within 30 days in the future. So it seems the threat of invoking a lawyer didn't work out so much. She was so pissed when we last spoke. I kept my calm and simply pointed out that when an agreement says "30 days" it doesn't mean soon after 30 days. They get so used to their suppliers eating whatever shit they shovel they literally think that's the way the world actually works as if they have a divine right.