He owes us £1400!!

Lifeisbutadream

thesaint wrote:

I believe that you have done everything you can in this situation.
Simply use it as a lesson, think if you'd done it at a cost of £4000.
Multi million pound companies face the same problems. Bad customers are rife.

In future, do not credit more than you can afford to lose.

Although you may lose a few jobs by charging a deposit up front, if your business is any good, it will be turning work away because you are so busy, so don't dwell on it.

Yes we have learnt a lesson, but I still dont agree that the laws in this country allow this to happen.

Any actually it costs us all money, because larger companies usually just write to debt off and then charge paying customers more. I wont do that.

Our business is very good, which is why I dont think honest customers should have to pay before they are entirely satisfied with their completed job.

Unfortunately, without doing a credit check, I dont know which ones are honest before we start. And in fact I have looked into that - it would cost me about £20 per check, which may be worth it in cases of large sums of money.

P.S. We would never do any work if we didnt credit more than we could afford to lose. We live hand to mouth.

ceebeeby

Hi Life ... Sorry to here your story. It is so frustrating that when people are trying to do an honest job there are people out to screw them. Could you charge people a "deposit" for materials etc. Particularly if you now have a number of referees that could vouch for your reliability. This way you might lose your labour costs, but you wouldn't be out of pocket for materials.

Revenge is best served professionally - I don't know the persons circumstances i.e. whether he is desperately sorry that it has ended up like this and is trying to do his best, or whether he's a complete chancer. It sounds from your description he's the latter.

Do you have £1400 worth of odd jobs he could do for you over the next year. You might want to suggest he pays off his debt in this manner (similar to washing dishes when you can't pay for a meal you've eaten - not that I've tried this!!!).

(((Hugs)))

Lifeisbutadream

ceebeeby wrote:

Hi Life ... Sorry to here your story. It is so frustrating that when people are trying to do an honest job there are people out to screw them. Could you charge people a "deposit" for materials etc. Particularly if you now have a number of referees that could vouch for your reliability. This way you might lose your labour costs, but you wouldn't be out of pocket for materials.

Revenge is best served professionally - I don't know the persons circumstances i.e. whether he is desperately sorry that it has ended up like this and is trying to do his best, or whether he's a complete chancer. It sounds from your description he's the latter.

Do you have £1400 worth of odd jobs he could do for you over the next year. You might want to suggest he pays off his debt in this manner (similar to washing dishes when you can't pay for a meal you've eaten - not that I've tried this!!!).

(((Hugs)))

Thats a fantastic idea!! however, the one and only time that I met him was when he answered the door and told me to f*** off.

So somehow I dont think that he would be willing to come and wash my dishes...:rolleyes:

krisskross

Lifeisbutadream wrote:

Unfortunately the material products are floor boarding, tiles and part of a bathroom suite! they would be absolutely useless to us taken out, plus, if I am correct you are not allowed to just go and take something from someones house.

The law is well and truly on his side.

Believe me, I have had many a fantasy about going and removing something else from him....

:mad:

Surely if he has not paid then the items still belong to you? Even if they are no use to you I would want to remove them anyway....especially if it included the lavatory.

diamonds

id report it to the police as fraud - he knew he couldnt pay it, and chase up the case with the relevent department after the police hand it over

Lifeisbutadream

krisskross wrote:

Surely if he has not paid then the items still belong to you? Even if they are no use to you I would want to remove them anyway....especially if it included the lavatory.

LOL :rotfl:

good idea, but then I definately wouldnt get payment

Lifeisbutadream

diamonds wrote:

id report it to the police as fraud - he knew he couldnt pay it, and chase up the case with the relevent department after the police hand it over

I spoke to the police - although they are very sympathetic, it is a 'civil' matter...

:mad:

Broken_hearted

Lifeisbutadream wrote:

Y

Unfortunately, without doing a credit check, I dont know which ones are honest before we start. .

That isn't true a credit check doesn't show if you are honest or not.

Mrs_Optimist

Out of interest, why didn't you send in the Bailiffs? Did he not have any goods worth siezing? Presumably your husband was in the house so had an idea as to how this robbing g~t lived.

Unfortunately you will have to put this down to experience. Perhaps you should request 50% up front in future with the remining 50% to be paid after the job has been done. That way you get some cash up front but do not alienate potential customers. I for one, would be extremely unhappy to hand over payment in full before a job was done - you see these programmes about rogue traders all the time.

Lifeisbutadream

Broken_hearted wrote:

That isn't true a credit check doesn't show if you are honest or not.

Thats true, but it would have shown up that he already had a CCJ.