to think DH needs to tell this man where to go and to be getting pissed off he wont?

[Dirtydishesmakemesad]

Dh is a self employed web developer.He has run his own business for two years. for the past year he has been doing alot of work for one man with a few smalle jobs as well. This man is awful paying, he pays 200 here 200 there its "oh can i pay next week" or some pie in the sky scheme he has. Our income was never high but we managed nicely the first year (without this client) and since dh was recovering from depression when we set the business up it suited us.

This client hasnt paid for about 6 weeks (and he owed money even before that he was supposed to be paying weekly because of this) not only that he doesnt seem to have any prospect of being able to pay in the near future - he tried to get a few websites done cheaply by going to some company in inida and of course it backfired badly and all of those sites want a refund. He has now told dh that these websites (that dh has never even seen before) need finishing before he can pay dh ANYTHING. It is weeks of work and aparently he has promised they will be done in a few days (not possible) DH has for months now been working 7 days a week pretty much all day and yet we have nothing to show for it. We had to pay the school 50p in 2ps on friday because we didnt actually have 50p other than that.

This week i have ranted at dh so much that he has applied for other freelance work and won 4 new projectss - all of whom will pay more than this guy does even when he does bother paying. My DH is GOOD at what he does and he can get other work when he wants and yet he is still spending god knows how long trying to work with this guy.

The last month for example our income has been less that £300 - for long days 7 days a week WTF I dont get why dh doesnt tell him to piss off??!

Ok it means no work from him n the future but we have no money now so im not sure how that is any worse. Surely by gettign rid of this guy he can concentrate on people who will actually pay him for his time.

I may have just told my dh to grow a pair - so its a bit of an after the fact OP but still AIBU?

Too much Star Trek or too many dodgy self-help books, plupervert?
Emotional issues as route to turning back on financial ones sounds fabulously luxurious to me.
Enough with the emotions, just check out making a claim against the dodgy geezer... (or cut your losses and move on to better contractors - DH certainly shouldn't be proioritising work for this one over anything else).
Good luck.

Yes, Stealth, and if not, the OP could use a hit child: under minimum wage and under the age of criminal responsibility!

Definitely too much Star Trek, PlumpDogPillionnaire!

But the emotional route is the "leak" through which all the money and time are draining, so it's not a waste of time to plug it!

if at all possible, i think you should write to this guy and tell him that your company will no longer be doing ANY work for him until contracts are signed and bills are paid.

i don't think you'll hear from him again after you've made it very clear. and you do that by replying to any of his emails with exactly the same sentence until he gives up.

surely if you own 50% of the business you can do this?

Possibly...
but sometimes you can take care of the pennies and the emotions takes care of themselves...

If you don't want to go the bosom-hoiking threats of legal action route, you could just say there's no way a stroke more work can be done until he pays - thereby turning the tables and threatening his livelihood. Perhaps then he'll find the money to pay somehow or other?

The trouble is that the DH seems very reluctant to cut this guy out; it sounds as though he would continue doing work, undermining his business partner (and wife! not to mention the children).

it's the first rule of business: get the contracts signed BEFORE you do the work! otherwise you won't see a penny. i hope your dh has learnt this and makes sure he has contracts for all the other work he does...

I totally agree that it is a business problem. However, the emotions are involved, and that is shafting the business.

It sounds to me as if there's every opportunity for emotions to shaft business here because OP's DH is vague about boundaries set by initial agreement to do work.
Those boundaries can still stand (legally), even if this was not a written agreement, but (as I've tried to explain above), this won't be the case if OP's DH continues to do the work. (And it'll make things harder for him in future, and it'll generally debase the value of the work he's doing, etc. etc. etc....)

Yes, indeed.

If you're still here, OP, I'm sorry for not reading all of your thread (I'm supposed to be Web developing, not mumsnetting! )

I'm susceptible to this problem, as well. Being good at my job has always been more important to me in terms of approval rathe than money - it's part of the big mess of issues bestowed on me by crap parents. In employment, this works fine - I work well, I say "Didn't I do well, can I have some more money?" and I'm satisfied.

Being self-employed is much harsher. Leeches like your DH's client can spot a sucker for praise miles off and have no compunction about taking the piss. You can't put praise in the bank.

I have fired a few clients by now. Every single one of them went into an insane rage - you may have read on here about 'Narcissistic Rage'; it's exactly the same thing. They were people who honestly believe they're so vastly entitled, it's an honour to serve them, such that they're doing you a favour if they pay at all. The rage isn't about you, whatever they say - it's fury that you have dared to doubt their entitlement.

Obviously, people like this are the very last ones you want as clients so it is extremely wise to dump them. When they try the emotional blackmail -> praise shower -> rage routine, just remember it really is all about them! They don't give a stuff about you. Indeed, they barely recognise that you're an actual human being; just a prop in their personal fantasy empire.

You know what? Firing them feels GOOD

You have to be able to take your personal feelings out of your business when you work with your spouse/partner.

When we had the agency, my husband called me into his office, gave me a (truly well deserved) bollocking and threatened to fire me!

We went home, had dinner and watched tv with the kids. Our rule was simple - a bollocking in the office stayed in the office and a row in the kitchen stayed in the kitchen

You have to be two couples, iyswim. Business partners and romantic partners and you can't let the one affect the other.

It is a really hard thing to do but it is vital if you are to be as successful as you can be.

So since you are a director, you do have some control here and you can step in - as you would do in this situation if you were the fellow director of someone who was not your husband.

You say you've never met this guy and nor has your dh. Do you mind me asking how you decided to accept him as a client without meeting him? Have you ever seen him or heard him talking?

Conspiracy theory 1 - client is your dh and he's trying to do these things himself through an alter ego and it's not working so he's not able to pay himself

Yes, very unlikely I know.

But - have you googled the client? Or used google maps to check his address? Or done a lookup on all his URLs and then checked those names and addresses? And looked at companies house for any info on his company? Can you give yourself a day or two to play private detective and see what you can find out about him? Might be worth doing.

Have you had a conversation with your dh to find out exactly what it is he expects to do for this client and how he expects the money to come in - and when. And what exactly you are going to live on in the mean time.

Could you speak to the client and find out when he plans on paying? Make sure your dh hasn't signed anything for him, you don't want to discover he has signed away his IP or anything else. Horrible I know but are you able to look back at any emails between him and your dh or listen to conversations they have to see if you can work out why this guy has such a hold on him? Has he convinced him he's going to be the next amazon or Facebook so much so that your dh is only seeing these dreams of a future fortune and has misguidedly been concentrating on this rather than the immediate need for reasonable income now.

Good luck, sounds horrible position for you to be in. Ive been in a small web/cm business where the owner started to not pay the freelancers and then ended up Making some of us redundant before finally going broke. The warning signs were there just as they are there for your dh. He needs to do something otherwise it's just going to get worse (sorry op) - sometimes it can be very difficult to admit you have made a mistake and backed the wrong thing, you can find yourself so far into something that psychologically as well as everything else you don't want to give up because that would mean admitting you've made a mistake so the only thing you can do is carry on doing the same to make it better. Bit like a gambler who is convinced that the next card or roll of the dice is going to be the one that wins them their fortunes.

If he is determined to carry on working for this guy could you persuade him to limit this to 1 or 2 days a week and do the other work to get the money in. Hopefully if he has a nice client that pays and doesn't mess him around he might realise that he isn't dependent on the other guy and then he'll be happier to move away from him.