Peeve about certain consumers

C_Mababejive

I would have made it clear that it was payment in cash on the day for such a job.

hollydays

I am so sorry your acts of kindness have resulted in you being treated so appallingly.I used to have a business and unfortunately soon learned that if you give many customers an inch they will take a mile,and I guess you have learned a lesson never to trust the majority, which is sad.

I had to resort to debt collectors as a last resort , but generally favoured sneaky trickery like getting hd of their employers number and ringing them at work.

alexlyne

Given a fixed price for a repair up front, with conditions of the what the repair may entail... and then people complain afterwards? That's a disgrace. If you went in and uhhmmed and ahhhed and sucked through your teeth and said it would cost more then that would be bad, but I can't see anything wrong with what you've done here, and I would certainly be happy to pay if I was in that position.

Problem with some old people are that they still have all their marbles, but watch tv shows where a lot of pensioners are ripped off by traders and don't want to have it happen to them, obviously. However, a fixed price for a fixed job and they just don't get it....

And about this doctor's wife who cant pay until april... what, she is not able to spend any money until he get's back? I hope he stocked up the cupboards before he went away!

camgirl

I had the same problem when I worked with my Dad, you invoice people and they dont always pay up, I used to handle it this way.

1\ Invoice sent out with payment terms, in my case 30 days from date of statement.
2\ If no payment recieved statement sent out.
3\ If statement ignored I would call to chase, and get the same old excuses, if it was a business it would be the lady who signs the cheques is off for 2 weeks, the person who does payments is off sick, cheque in the post etc etc.
4\ If I still didnt get payment a 7 day letter threatening court action.
5\ I would then sue, most were amazed that we actually did this and thought they would get away without paying. In the end I employed a debt collection agency to do it all for me at a small charge to save time.

Some people unfortunately only pay if they are taken to court. It always amazed me that people I had taken to court tried to order off us again once they had eventually paid despite us taking this action, almost like it was not a big deal despite suing them they still wanted to do business again once it was all sorted out!

I am amazed at the amount of businesses/trades that write off debts that they could get easily if they took people to court, but dont because "it's too much hassle" which is really is not especially if you use a local debt collection agency.

rustyboy21

C_Mababejive wrote: »

I would have made it clear that it was payment in cash on the day for such a job.

It was bedlam at the time, and being a soft sod at heart, with the run up to xmas , if they had the £40 then pay me, otherwise come in and pay asap. everyone was left with an invoice. Won't be doing it again.

At the moment I have £775 outstanding from them all. Lets see what the weekend brings in.

with regards to data protection. I have never had to sign up to the act, as I do not offer credit and all my records are kept manually in store. ( As far as I know, never been approached ), nothing is sold on to third parties.

Anyway gotta go, got to get on a roof while the sun shines, to at least claw back some money owed from aborted installations ovr xmas.

Thanks for the comments

Darksun

rustyboy21 wrote: »

with regards to data protection. I have never had to sign up to the act, as I do not offer credit and all my records are kept manually in store. ( As far as I know, never been approached ), nothing is sold on to third parties.

That just means you're not obliged to be registered with the ICO. Any organisation that holds personal information for business purposes still has obligations under the DPA, even if it's something as simple as a written phone book or a file of invoices

NoSatisfaction

rustyboy21 wrote: »

Hi Thanks for all the messages of support, there are some nice people out there.

Just an update...

Had 2 people in today, one apologetic about delay in paying, lovely women in her thirties. Another one offered to pay £10 as the engineer was ' only there 10 minutes ' !

Reminds me of a story about Ford in the 1920s. He had a problem with a machine in his factory and called in an engineer. The engineer took ten or so minutes looking at the machine and marked an "x" where the problem was.

A week later he sent Ford an in voce for $20000.

Ford was surprised at the invoice value and asked for a breakdown. The breakdown arrived $100 for site visit and $19900 for knowing where to put the "x"!

I suspect it's an urban myth but the point is £10 for ten minutes work is low as it does not count travelling costs and time, overheads etc etc etc.

Sue the so and so!!!

NoSatisfaction

Friend of mine is a bricky. He built a garden wall for a fixed price on payment when completed terms.

Job was done and customer said he didn't have the dosh!

Friend went to his van, got out his sledge hammer and started to demolish the wall he just built!

Customer called the police who turned up and laughed saying it was a civil matter despite customer pressing for criminal damage.

Customer took a wedge of cash from his pocket, many times more than enough to pay the original bill and my friend charged him again to rebuild the part of the wall he had just demolished and at a higher "overtime" rate! :T

NoSatisfaction

Darksun wrote: »

I really wouldn't try anything like this if I were you. You could potentially be breaching data protection laws, and just because a statement is true doesn't mean it's not defamatory.

If it is true it cannot be defamatory!

DP laws are another matter. OP should pay the small fee to hold data and as long as it's truthful he can do with it as he pleases, within the law of course!

katerinasol

NoSatisfaction wrote: »

Friend of mine is a bricky. He built a garden wall for a fixed price on payment when completed terms.

Job was done and customer said he didn't have the dosh!

Friend went to his van, got out his sledge hammer and started to demolish the wall he just built!

Customer called the police who turned up and laughed saying it was a civil matter despite customer pressing for criminal damage.

Customer took a wedge of cash from his pocket, many times more than enough to pay the original bill and my friend charged him again to rebuild the part of the wall he had just demolished and at a higher "overtime" rate! :T

Hahaha that made me laugh, I hate it when people try to pull crap like that on honest traders!