

Ask HN: How do I harass my clients politely? - orenmazor

inevitably at least one client in four or five will take forever to pay me. I've been chasing one for about a year now, and I suspect one will start dragging out too.<p>the amounts aren't enough to justify small claims (they're all a few grand each), but I feel like the occasional reminder email is pretty easily ignorable.<p>what do you guys do?
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run4yourlives
How about stop worrying about being polite for one?

In all seriousness - these people owe you money. They've stolen from you.
While I'm not suggesting you call them up and launch into a profanity laced
tirade because they are a day late, there is no need to be anything other than
curt yet professional with them.

One polite notice is all that is required. Then one direct reminder. Then one
demand. Then a threat. (we're going to collections) Then you act on the
threat. (Write off/collections/end business relationship, etc)

If you're getting 25% of your clients not paying you consistently, I'd suggest
that you should alter your payment arrangements to demand more up front, or
raise prices. Delinquencies are normally never more than 10%, and even that is
high.

~~~
orenmazor
I'm canadian. we apologize to somebody if they slip and fall when we had
nothing to do with it. I'm still apologizing for how the battle of hastings
turned out.

Its not a financial burden yet, just an annoyance. my higher rate/bigger
projects are always on time. its the smaller ones that aren't. I might just
stop doing anything that's less than 2 grand in total (time and materials, vs
project rate)

~~~
run4yourlives
I'm Canadian too, but at some point, you need to "man up".

I'd say you don't need to stop doing smaller projects, but you need to stop
pricing them so small. Figure out all the time and effort it's taking you for
collections and add that to every project under a minimum amount.

The idea is not to win every project, you can do that by charging $5/hour. The
idea is to win the _right_ projects.

~~~
orenmazor
yeah, you're right. I've definitely gotten much better both at pricing myself
appropriately and refusing to do things I dont like (i.e. I hate joomla, so I
refuse to do joomla contracts, or ask for a great deal of money).

I'm just annoyed and looking for a silver bullet, which there is none.

------
cdr
See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450424>

