Mini Milestones
One more day for you to surf on over to the Biz Chicks Rule site and vote for yours truly, possibly scoring your own prize in their What I Want to Be contest!
It’s also one more day before the nonpaying client gets notice of litigation. I try to be fair and nice, but I was promised the check would be sent by last Friday. Yesterday’s correspondence confirmed it hasn’t been touched. When one promises something and then a few days later follows up with a “Could you get this invoice processed for her, please?”, it’s an obvious attempt to delay payment. Worse, each time I inquire, another person gets piled on to the ever-growing list of people who are “handling” my invoice. Last week, the director promised me on the phone (damn him for not putting it in writing!) that he was handling that invoice himself. That’s when I was told payment was almost in my hands.
As a business person, you don’t need to put up with that. The minute you smell the runaround, even if it’s well before you’d normally escalate things in order to get payment, start the process of litigation or collection. I’m serious. I usually allow three months before I give the litigation notice. I’m two months in and I know one more month isn’t going to change anything. The contract I signed with these people stated very clearly they were to pay me bi-weekly. Those were their terms. It’s been 8 weeks. I’m done with them.
Right now, I’m scaring up info on attorneys who handle these types of cases, for this isn’t simply a nonpayment. This is also a potential copyright infringement. See, I add the caveat to each project (when I suspect trouble, as I did this time) that copyright does not transfer until the bill is paid. That’s a much more serious infraction, in my opinion. And yes, I’ve managed to secure the ability to find out if this project is in use. Luckily, this client isn’t quite as adept at avoiding payment as he thinks. He handed me the ability to prove the product’s use in one of his attempts to avoid payment. He may have outwitted himself alone.
Go get the sucker, dude. There’s no yanking we writer folk around. We are a vengeful people.
Kick his butt around the block.
Lori:
I’m with you. Don’t forget to add the cost of litigation, if you can, to what he owes you. Good for you for going after a copyright infringement. I use that on my contracts, too.
Oh, I can certainly add that cost. And I will. No way will I end up paying for their delays.