Tradesman chasing for payment

[CharlesIsQueensHorcrux]

Hi - I had a tradesman in last week, finished Friday & invoiced Friday night with email and message. Since then has messaged another five times chasing me! By the way I wasn’t ignoring him I messaged back saying I was out but would deal. Is it me or is he unreasonable to chase me all weekend for an invoice issued on Friday night? I was happy with the work but not sure now I would use him again as I feel a bit ick like there’s a suggestion I wouldn’t pay or something. Aibu?

We invoice as payment on job completion for my dh and would expect payment within 24 hours

Of course it does. Bank transfers are instant at any time on any day

BACS payments are made immediately and are in the recipients' bank within seconds.

Bank-bank transfers are instant.
I have to say, late pay a DJ and you'd be blacklisted in the industry for life.

It's quite likely they've also supplied the customer with a product.

Grown adults and all that.😂

In my industry, badgering a client for payment within a day of delivering the job would have you blacklisted for life.

You don't see the difference between paying directly for a product and an invoice being issued to you for future payment for a service rendered?

How embarrassing for you.

I don’t understand why so many of you seem to think ignoring a due payment because it happens to fall just before a weekend is acceptable. It’s not. Most people do online banking these days, which work perfectly well 365 days of the year. If there’s an app issue, call the bank and do a phone payment. Unless you have made a specific agreement with the tradesman before the invoice was issued, the fact that Saturday and Sunday exist have precisely fuck all to do with anything. By the way, most tradesman get paid/are paid by bosses and contractors on a Friday. It’s possible you’re stuffing up someone else’s finances.

Lots of people don't work weekends, and paying invoices is work.

I have just delivered a piece of work for a client. Should I expect them to pay me right now, at 6pm on a Sunday, because actually I could do with the cash so I can go to Lidl tomorrow? Of course not, that's fucking ludicrous.

I've sent an email, it will probably be read tomorrow morning, and the invoice paid within 30 days. This is how it works. Harassing clients for payment after the end of the working week is fucking batshit.

Does your husband make it clear in Ts and Cs that it is 24 hour payment? I don't think OP has said she was told that payment terms were immediate.

Even if he does say 24 hours I would suggest that one chaser at 24 hours and then a follow-up call next working day is much more reasonable than repeated texts the following day.

Only if you have access to a pc/laptop which I don’t at the weekend. For some reason my bank website won’t work on my iPad and it certainly won’t on an iPhone 6.

That's not my understanding of BACS at all, though I know for personal transfers it can take minutes.

So rather than take 2 mins to pay him you took 5 to post about it on mumsnet?

you can’t tell me you can’t do internet banking if you’re on MN. If you can’t you should have cash ready.

Phoning my bank would be no good as I’d have to remember a password I set 30 years ago. The last time I needed to make a large payment which was about 12 months ago I had to wait a week for a card reader to be sent through the post and then for a verification code. Prior to that I’d paid everything by cheque.

in the end my husband managed to make the payment.

I regularly pay a business and have some business that pay me by BACS - the payment is always instant and in the respective account within seconds.

Goodness, some of the excess sound like my dd trying to get out of chores 😆. Reset your internet banking password ffs. At some point you're bound to need it. Transferring money is such a easy task in 2022 and a handy one at that. Don't wait til you need it and can't do it!

@TheOrigRights

Bacs Direct Credit is the preferred method of receiving payments, with eight in ten employees in the UK receiving wages or salaries this way.

For businesses it makes sense to actively encourage all their customers to pay them direct by Bacs Direct Credit.

-

Unlike cheques, payments by Bacs Direct Credit arrive instantly as cleared funds, so the money can be used straightaway or earn interest earlier too.

www.bacs.co.uk/services/bacs-schemes/bacs-direct-credit/receiving-payments/

Or you could have linked to other sites which state:

Natwest "BACS payments are subject to a three day processing cycle"

Barclays "However, BACs payments (which usually include salary payments) may take up to 3 working days."

Santander "Bacs payments take 3 days to reach the receiving sort code account number as they are batched."

Faster payments are instant, as are CHAPS payments.BACS payments take up to four working days to clear.

I think chasing them same day / day after, without having requested immediate payment first, is a bit odd, to be honest.

Of course pay them. But almost every trade will invoice then accept 1.2,3 + days before they start chasing, unless terms set in advance.

It makes me feel they are in financial difficulty, which would make me concerned about recommending without caveats.

You are all getting very confused with BACS and direct payments.

BACS is a service a company utilises for large payments or multi payments. There is a service chargeZ it's not how individual payments from your own banks work.

If you do a direct bank transfer from your account to the tradesman's business account then usually this will clear within 2 hours including on bank holidays and weekends.

It would have taken OP 2 mins at the most to log into a banking app and send the money which of you read her subsequent posts she did. However there was a limit on how much she could transfer so the rest has been sent today.

See all sorted. You can stand down MN massive!

Normal payment terms in the industry are 30 days after the issue of the invoice. I would never expect to be paid before clients had had ample time to check the quality of my work

I'd argue that 30 days is pretty ridiculous, and even then, many large organisations take the proverbial and try to impose longer terms, often 45 days or even 60. Late payments legislation doesn't work.

But 30 seconds/minutes is also ridiculous. 7 days is reasonable, with provision for part-payment if someone has to pay in advance for materials - for example when I got a new gas boiler the installer had to pay in advance for it so we paid for the boiler upfront and the installation within a couple of days. It seems like a lot of tradespeople don't have accounts anymore.

If you can’t you should have cash ready if it costs £60 maybe. If it costs £3K, not so much!

Not always, can be 3 days

Failures on both parts possibly.
he should have made it clear he required payment on the day the job was finished. That should have been written down clearly.

Equally, Op knew the job was coming to an end and should have planned ahead so payment could be made….so sorted out access to online banking etc. There are a lot of excuses, and if she was satisfied with job, once the payment had been asked for she should have paid.

Now Op knows that this is the deal with tradesmen. She could point out to him that in future he should make clear he requires payment immediately at end of job if that is his requirement.

Not everyone deals with tradesmen frequently and if it isn’t stated that immediate payment is required might not know. As a tradesman, it is important to be clear up front about expectations. I think that sending multiple chasing messages should have been delayed until Monday. If Op had paid on Monday morning following a Friday invoice and given the weekend, I think that would have been acceptable. HOwever, if OP thought delaying any longer was acceptable that would have been a problem.

Too many people decide it’s okay to delay by a few days or a week….think busy lives, getting round to it etc are okay. Think tradesmen should just wait until the customer finds it convenient, feel it is up to THEM to say when payment happens and not the tradesman. This isn’t good, but common.

Hopefully people reading this thread have learned something. If tradespeople they need to be upfront about payment requirements. If customers need to expect to pay speedily. That’s it.

That is fine if the tradesman made it 100% clear before accepting the job that he would invoice shortly after doing the job and that payment would be due within 24 hours. But I don't think OP says he did this. Even if he did -

(1) Be realistic. People have lives. 2 or 3 days is a more reasonable time period to give people to actually find time to make a payment.

(2) Harrassing the client is unprofessional and makes you less employable. A chaser via text after 24 hours and a call on Monday morning would be fine, harrassment is not fine, and I'd have been tempted to text back "I'm blocking you now. I will pay you soon." and pay him a day or two later at my convenience if I were OP.

I run my own business and like and appreciate prompt payment. But I am realistic. Not everyone can do whatever you want immediately.