People not paying for work done!!!

[chickenlickin]

My DH is an electrician and has a joint business between him and two others. Has only been going for two years and I cannot believe how many people have thousands of pounds of work done and then say they can't pay! They have a quote and agree to the price and then still go ahead knowing they cannot pay!!!! Is beginning to take the piss!!! I wouldn't go into tesco's and still take the shopping home and not pay for it!!!! Makes my blood boil, have told him to go in a rip all the wires etc out!

dp and i have similar problems. I'm self employed and run a cash business, thankfully, as it keeps up afloat. Dp's business is owed thousands, by people. I told him to give me the phone numbers and i'll chase them. If they don't pay, i'll go round with 4 yo ds and get him to follow them round saying "can i have a cheque please" all day. That should do it :-)

We had this with a company last year who got DH in for 8 weeks consultancy and didn't pay. It was always 'oh, check your bank, it should be there' and then 'oh you're right, it hasn't gone through, it should be there next week' . It was just at the point that the credit crunch really hit and all the other work dried up. I sold jewellery that had belonged to my great-grandma so that we had something to live on - it made me cry to sell it and it only covered enough for one month's rent and a couple of weeks food so we were still desperately worried. I got so angry, I wanted to go and throw paintstripper over the CEOs ferrari. His kids were in private schools while I was struggling to feed my DS, my DH had brought so much money into his company, and he wouldn't pay the invoice he'd agreed to which was chickenfeed to him, but vital for us.

Then they asked him - five months later - to come back and do some more work - the cheek! He told them to take a hike and they were shocked. They paid him then, because their client (DH had been consulting on a particular client's work) was saying they'd only get to keep the account if DH was working on it. And just then, another company called saying that the client had approached them and mentioned that they particularly liked DH. DH went to work for this other company for five weeks, they got the new client account, and they paid him on time. And DH had got the money from the other company. And the first company (the non-payers) still contact him all the time begging him to come and work for them again. Ha. Sometimes karma is even better than paintstripper. Still breaks my heart when I think of my great-grandma's mourning brooch though.

Agreed. Had to have a string conversation with a customer last night as they owed me £9.5k. A few months work.

They paid today but still annoys me they were "getting around to it". If I owed them the same they'd be livid if I was getting around to it.

My dh is also a self employed electrician,and a few years ago he did a lot of work from someone who was setting up some kind of health place to include things like reflexology,he got paid by cheque ,which then bounced,after many phone calls which most of the time it appeared that someone always said she wasnt there,he finally got to talk to her and she said " oh you were one of the unlucky ones ,i knew there wouldnt be enough to pay everyone " She then did a flit and the only thing dh managed to get back was an expensive humidifier.I am always scanning the list of local reflexologists to see if i spot her name.That almost made us broke and caused us a lot of heartache as we still had to pay mortgage etc.Even now ,people know he is going to finish the job that day and then turn round and say they will pay next week !! I would not go into a shop and say that ,neither would i keep any tradesman waiting for his money.

I'm also self-employed and have given up working for private individuals and companies because I was forever chasing payment, and sometimes not getting paid at all.

There was many a time my exP would have to go around to people to get the money I was owed. They always paid up when he went knocking on the door.

As he's no longer around - I decided that I would only work for the public sector - mainly local government. They always pay .. but they still take their bloody time. Different story when you owe them money, but there's not a lot I can do about it. Still waiting for payment of an invoice issued on 27th May. Will be nearly two months gone before I get it, and sometimes it's been as long as 16 weeks!!! There's no way of hurrying them up either. Phone calls are useless - I just have to wait it out and am permanently overdrawn.

I'm shocked by how awful people are at paying! I now realise I'm now a 'dream client' We've had a lot of work done to the house and I always pay as soon as the job is done. I always check to see if any money is needed for materials at the start,a s well. But then we've had really good workmen so I don't want to p*ss them off!

On a big build we paid in stages. I think it'd be fair to charge this way for longer jobs in any trade. Then at least if they don't pay up, it's not quite some much!

(I also make lots of tea and cake! They love me!)

I wouldn't dare not pay, I'd feel too bad. It amazes me the rubber skins some people have!

We did take staged payments and deposits for big jobs but because of the 'advice' never to pay up front many are very wary of this don't like doing so. It's that final payment that's always so elusive!

With regard to small claims, the ones we have pursued that way have not been financially worth it, the most we've got is half but it has been satisfying!