AIBU to feel annoyed by a payment reminder after 36 hours?

[SixtySomething]

We have a weekly service at our house. The company sends us a bill a few hours after finishing the work and we pay by bank transfer. The cost can vary so we don't pay by direct debit.
Recently, we received the regular bill but didn't pay immediately. The bill was followed up with a reminder 36 hours later. We are longstanding customers.This left me feeling really narked. AIBU?
YABU: They did the work, so you should pay them straight away.
YANBU: They should give you a week to pay. This is pushy behaviour.

🙄

Oh dear. Just pay as soon as service was carried out.

If they have asked for immediate payment, those are the terms and conditions. Not after a week or a month or 3 months. It is for them to decide when payment is due, and if you have a problem with that time frame, you need to talk to them.

If you simply forgot, surely you should just apologise rather than call them greedy or pushy - it was your mistake, not their mistake?

If they are chasing after 36 hours there will be a reason for it, so a bit of good will as well as an apology from you would work?

You have been voted U by 96 percent.

We used to pay the milkman etc in cash when I was a child and paying on time was seen as important, so I don't think times have changed.

Though more and more people are sinking into poverty at the moment. Which is another reason to pay quickly.

I am about to dump a client who I supply a monthly service to. She has paid late in the past and claimed it was just an oversight so I agreed to carry on. She paid on time for a couple of months and now she is late again this month. So I am not longer willing to do any work for her. She will receive a formal letter from me at the end of the week to that effect. As well as affecting my cash flow she is wasting my time because I have to do additional admin to chase her invoices and this is time I could better spend finding new clients...

This.

most of my husband's clients are really good at paying their bills on time. They seem to understand that we also have bills to pay on time! One of his clients is an awful payer, and recently swanned off to the Maldives leaving a large bill unpaid for several weeks. Guess what? She won't be getting the service from us again. Pay bills on time people - small businesses are usually run by families who are reliant on bills being paid on time to pay their own bills.

i hope your husband has better luck next time. Wishing you lots of success xx

They are running a business not a charity they deserve to be paid on time and not have to chase you up about it.

OP: Am I being unreasonable?
Everyone: Yes.
OP: No I'm not!

Why ask then, if you aren't prepared to take on board the responses? Pointless post.

Almost nobody is answering the actual question, or any relevant questions though.

The question isn't should a business ever send a reminder. The question isn't should you ever pay bills. And those are about the only questions anyone has answered.

The question is was a reminder within a day and half, from a business that had never done that, and from a business that has payment options that would mean payment comes 10 days after, a bit over the top.

Maybe it isnt and the OP is still wrong, but it's pretty crazy basically nobody has answered the actual question and is a good reason to step back and wonder about the result.

Loads did.

You just haven’t bothered to read all the posts.

Not sure how you have decided it is 'British', when virtually everyone has told the OP she is unreasonable, and I've lost count of the number of times the OP has had it pointed out it is just a reminder, which - as by her own admission she claims to have just 'forgotten' to pay - is a helpful thing for her.

Have you read the thread?
Have you looked at the stat?

@Flatinbed the OP isn't sorry. She thinks they're being greedy by asking for the payment.

Yet not even a hint at one for me to find, or an example quote.

I know there's a small number not entirely against he OP, because I also posted previously. And the poll wasn’t' 100% - I hope you aren't suggesting that a couple of posts out of all of them, changes my point.

This is what the OP asked:

”YABU: They did the work, so you should pay them straight away.
YANBU: They should give you a week to pay. This is pushy behaviour”

I think that’s pretty much what everyone is answering, isn’t it?

As far as I can see, the vast majority of people are saying explicitly that you should pay straight away. OP still thinks that’s unreasonable, despite the majority view.

I can’t see where people aren’t directly answering this??

Have you read the thread? yes actually. Did you read my post saying that the op was overeacting? And that she should just apologise and pay.

Have you looked at the stat? No. Is that neccesary for forming an opinion...so I get the right one?

You have also said that your husband has said that 5 percent never pay their bills, something like 35 percent pay late ... I am going to hazard a guess that your husband provides a professional service, something like accounting or legal services? Because that would fit with what you have said about not wanting to chase clients and some clients never paying (clients will sometimes say that the advice was wrong and refuse to pay).

If so, yours is a completely different service from, say, trades, cleaning, small business car repairs, small hotels, care, etc etc etc, most of whom will expect immediate payment. And late payment will often cause problems and therefore be chased up very quickly. It is not "greedy" or "pushy" to chase up in those circs, I don't think.

Going in hard hat: this seems to be a typically british trait.

bit of a weird take on it.

They are neighbours ?

so you could have put cash through their door anytime - once you had remembered of course 😉

So, surely a reminder was a good thing?

whether they have t&cs or not they’ve provided a service and deserve to be paid promptly!!

Define promptly. The OP can't pay until she knows how much it is. If she gets the email on (say) Tuesday morning but she's at work so doesn't look at her emails and then is busy in the evening she might not get to it until the next day and by then it could well be 36 hours from the initial email, but it's not like she doesn't intend to pay.

Plus for the people going on about cashflow and how you wouldn't expect to pay later in Tesco etc, anyone providing a service to a business will be lucky if they are paid within a month let alone a day, and anyone who is employed doesn't receive their salary until their employer owes them for up to a month's work. So to be paid for work done within a couple of days is pretty quick by comparison.

If they expect payment within 24 hours of receipt of invoice they should say so.

But this is a weekly service so she knows how much it is each week. It’s expected that she just pays it.

In regular service industries it’s normal to pay on the day of service and a lot of regular service providers will say a polite goodbye to a client who doesn’t just pay on completion of service as they find it rude, it’s an industry norm to not need or want to chase payments in

Also don’t forget the OP’s own husband is having to write off 5% of his invoices as unpaid, which in the service industry would never fly as with margins so tight it would soon send the business/individual under so his patience is not working out well for him! People are taking the piss, but that is something a service business cannot financially support

With small services, immediate payment is considered the norm unless another arrangement is agreed upon by both parties and clients generally do know that

I must admit that I'm finding this whole thing difficult. I have someone who comes to me once a fortnight to help me out. I generally pay her by bank transfer when she is on her way out of the door. Very occasionally, I get distracted and forget and she will send me a text within 24hrs, saying that she needs to go shopping, or whatever, and needs the money. If this happens, I feel terrible, pay her, and round up the payment.

I'm afraid that I cannot have any sympathy for the OP in this thread who appears to resent being reminded to pay someone who has done work for her. She should pay what she owes, and be grateful that she has been reminded. To be honest, if this is all she has to worry about in life, she is one very lucky lady.