I have a friend who retired but still does some contract work. They were on salary their whole career and are not used to sending invoices and tracking down payments. One of their clients was late paying and my friend wasn't concerned, but I encouraged them to be diligent about insisting on being paid on time. I have been a freelancer for over a decade and in my experience, the further away you get from a bill, the less real it becomes to the person who owes it. They start forgetting what the project was, or worse, start questioning why they even have to pay for it. You have to stay on top of these things or they can spiral out of control.
What being ripped off taught me
61–70 of 247 posts
Re: What being ripped off taught me
#62We’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
I think OP needed "emergency service is cash up front".
In a different domain, this is the painful lesson of almost anyone who tries to help people in a bind -- you can try to help, but yours is unlikely to be the advice that sets them straight, so you shouldn't get too invested with unproven or, especially, proven unreliable actors.
Re: What being ripped off taught me
#63When you walk into a shitshow like this, the first thing you do is secure your payments. Anyone who is in such bad shape like how OP described it means that they are desperate, and desperate people will do and say anything to get help.
It is most likely going to not pay anyone so you need to make sure you're paid above and beyond anything else otherwise walk.
Re: What being ripped off taught me
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure that's the best takeaway here, in that it gets the causation wrong. It's not the deal that made the customer bad, it's that the bad customer insisted on getting a deal, whereas a good customer usually knows what quality costs and is prepared to pay. The takeaway here is probably that the fix isn't just "never discount", but it's to screen for the kind of customer who treats a good deal as an invitation t…
> It's not the deal that made the customer bad, it's that the bad customer insisted on getting a deal That was indeed the point, guess I conveyed it in a poor way.
That's OK, it's clarified now.
Re: What being ripped off taught me
#65We’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
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Re: What being ripped off taught me
#66What'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…
So is it an actual moving bus or just a simulation of one? I have not heard of the concept before
Re: What being ripped off taught me
#67> End clients can’t tell the difference between these bozos and me. I don’t know what to do with that information but it feels bad.
This is unfortunately all too common. It's hard for someone who isn't an expert in the specific field to separate a smooth grifter from a more typical sales pitch
Re: What being ripped off taught me
#68Evergreen advice from the design side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U (Mike Monteiro: F*ck You, Pay Me)
Watched a couple of times, but I don't fully understand the message in this video. Can someone ELI5?
Have a contract that encodes "fuck you, pay me" into the terms. Ideally, have an actual lawyer take care of the contract and the enforcement. There's a lot of law-y stuff out there that won't hold up in reality. Mortgage companies don't take payment in excuses from your clients, so neither should you.
Re: What being ripped off taught me
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like none of these terms would have saved OP though
I think OP needed "emergency service is cash up front". In a different domain, this is the painful lesson of almost anyone who tries to help people in a bind -- you can try to help, but yours is unlikely to be the advice that sets them straight, so you shouldn't get too invested with unproven or, especially, proven unreliable actors.
>> "emergency service is cash up front“
Neatly distilled I believe you are correct
Re: What being ripped off taught me
#70Wage theft is the most lucrative and least prosecuted crime in America.
FTA: China