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What being ripped off taught me

belief.horse

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Re: What being ripped off taught me

#21

Post by eckesicle »

We’ve also learned this lesson the hard way. These are now the clauses we require in every project we do:

- Payment is due X days after receipt of invoice, or immediately after the consultant has addressed any quality issues, whichever is sooner

- Late payment shall incur interest at 8% above the BoE base rate and a late fee of 100 GBP as per the UK Late Payment Legislation. Partial payments on invoices shall apply to late fees, interest, and then principal, in that order.

- In the event of a late payment the invoice for the next deliverable shall immediately fall due.

- The consultant shall be entitled to shift deadlines on deliverables in the event of a late payment as a result of any work disruption, without incurring any liability.

- Payment shall be made in X currency, or an exchange rate at X date on Oanda.com shall apply.

- The client is responsible for any bank fees incurred by their, or any intermediary bank. In the event of a SWIFT transaction it shall be made with the OUR payment code.

- The jurisdiction in the event of a conflict shall be England and Wales. Neither party shall be bound by arbitration.

- The client and consultant shall both indemnify the other up to the total value of the contract and shall not under any circumstance be liable beyond X GBP.

We also no longer share downloadable links of our deliverables until they are paid up. They get a view/comment only link for reports/data etc.

We’ve found that clients that aren’t willing to accept these terms won’t pay you either way.

We determine the net days on the invoice based on the credit rating of the client. Ironically, the good clients pay within 2-3 days normally, and the difficult ones are very “long tail”. About 1% of contracts tend to fully or partially default on their payments.

We’re in a particularly credit poor industry but our average delay due to late payment is 23 days. Those clients where we stop delivery pay on average 11 days sooner than those contracts where we don’t stop delivery.

This is based on around 2,000 invoices sent over the last 5 years.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#22

Post by post-it »

rwmj wrote: post #15

What's an "AR bus"? How can augmented reality windows work on a bus unless you are (a) tracking the passenger's head and (b) there's only one passenger?

Screens outside the windows (not on the windows) can provide parallax, no need to track heads. However, in this case:

> They were attempting to pull off AR effects on the transparent OLED windows of the bus without accounting for lens distortion, field of view, parallax, occlusion, etc., and were frustrated and mystified when things didn’t appear to line up. They were completely naive to what depth and scale cues are and how to deploy them.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#23

Post by the_snooze »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #11

Be paid or don't work. I am so deadly serious - do not continue working if your invoices are late. You don't have to be a jerk about it, just explain to your primary contact that you need to be paid and you pick up tools again when the money has arrived. BUT it is on YOU to properly negotiate reasonable payment terms. And if you don;t know or don't trust the client then require payment in advance until a stronger com…

A professional knows what they're worth and what they need to deliver. On-time payment according on an agreed-upon schedule is table stakes. That's the most fundamental requirement. Nothing happens without that.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#24

Post by bob1029 »

I've started operating in really granular units of work. Like less than $1000 per. Cash on delivery. This won't work with all clients and all jobs, but there are places where it does work very well. Advantages include being able to avoid paper contracts altogether. Verbal agreements and a 4 column xlsx that is reviewed monthly are all that seem to be required with some of my clients.

If I don't get paid for one day of work, I will probably get over it in a few hours. If I don't get paid for six months of work, we will have a serious problem. The tighter and more incremental we can make the delivery process, the less likely anyone gets screwed.

If a party is pushing hard for long-term contracts or large up-front sums of payment, I would walk away from that transaction unless there was a literal golden goose sitting in their lap.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#26

Post by eckesicle »

eckesicle wrote: post #21

We’ve also learned this lesson the hard way. These are now the clauses we require in every project we do: - Payment is due X days after receipt of invoice, or immediately after the consultant has addressed any quality issues, whichever is sooner - Late payment shall incur interest at 8% above the BoE base rate and a late fee of 100 GBP as per the UK Late Payment Legislation. Partial payments on invoices shall apply t…

Oh and another lesson! Ensuring that each deliverable invoice is small enough that it falls under the simplified claims procedure (in the UK it’s 10,000 pounds) greatly simplifies collection.

It costs something like 80 quid to file for recovery in court and in our experience invoices are immediately paid up when a “Letter before action” is sent.

You burn the relationship, but arguably you probably don’t want it anyway.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#27

Post by firtoz »

dspillett wrote: post #6
for_i_in_range wrote: post #2

Who are they?

Which they? The contractor, the project owners, etc? And is who they are relevant to the lesson (stealing time/effort is easy to get away with, you need to protect yourself from that)?

Article contains this:

> I’ll happily tell you who they are - get in touch

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#28

Post by yellow_lead »

eckesicle wrote: post #21

We’ve also learned this lesson the hard way. These are now the clauses we require in every project we do: - Payment is due X days after receipt of invoice, or immediately after the consultant has addressed any quality issues, whichever is sooner - Late payment shall incur interest at 8% above the BoE base rate and a late fee of 100 GBP as per the UK Late Payment Legislation. Partial payments on invoices shall apply t…

It seems like none of these terms would have saved OP though

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#29

Post by hermannj314 »

fontain wrote: post #10

“A contract is toilet paper” A little hyperbolic, but more accurate than not when laypeople think about contracts. A contract isn’t a magic spell, it is a declaration of shared understanding that can be used for clarity and in legal proceedings. If you think of a contract as a way to ensure you get what you agreed, yes, it is toilet paper, because a contract doesn’t remove counterparty risk.

A piece of contract toilet paper is still better than a bare hand shake agreement.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#30

Post by LoganDark »

balbladsaf1231 wrote: post #20

> A contract is toilet paper no it isn't. why you did not sue them? success rate of international arbitrage (New York Convention) proces into China is 90% success rate. USA/EU companies who sue Chineses companies in China for breach of contract seem to be winning rates. Enforcement of USA curt orders do not need to go thorugh Chinese courts again, and are enforced by local authorities (local sharks) with success rate…

> why you did not sue them?

Because they could just dissolve the entity and get away with it. Did you even read the rest of the article?

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