Dead Beat customers

[Steve]

How long of a process does it take to get paid once you contact the collection agency?

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[myrlin]

Lawn care business tips

Well the customer pay me finely. We send another bill and on the reture payment he said You're Fired!! *HA HA barry

[Steve]

What do you think that customer's problem was?

[myrlin]

We have no idea. He never indicated there was any problem. He had contacted us to mow his lawn until he bought his own mower. We mowed it 3 times and then he called us and said he bought his own mower we didn't need to mow any longer. When we billed him, he said he didn't remember us mowing it so that's why he didn't pay us. then we received the payment yesterday. Who knows why he put that comment "You're Fired"!!! Some customers you just don't understand them.

[Steve]

WOW Well I am sorry that happened but at least you were finally paid.

[Steve]

Does anyone have any deadbeat customer stories and how they dealt with them?

Originally Posted by Steve

Does anyone have any deadbeat customer stories and how they dealt with them?

I had one customer who was usually home and always paid cash. Right after he hired me to do a bunch of additional weeding, he disappeared. I mowed a couple more times, thinking that maybe I wasn't catching him at home, then gave up. He owed me $500 and I've never gotten it. I just gave up on it, since I didn't know his last name and am too lazy to go through all the effort of going to the city for such a small sum.

He was kind of sketchy, he had a pit bull that nearly attacked me once, and by the end of the summer when he was done "renovating" his house, he had the whole property covered by infrared security cameras with unpickable locks and security plates on the doors. He also had all the windows replaced on a pretty new house, which I guessed were probably new bulletproof windows. He was about 30 and drove a brand new Porsche 911 turbo and an F350 super duty that was pretty tricked out. My assumption is that he is some sort of high level drug dealer/gang leader...so that was another reason I figured I'd let it slide.

[AzScapes]

Haha thats funny Dave , i have had quite a few dead beats as well this year. The funniest was a collage girls house i did. She wanted bi monthly maintenance . I mowed the lawn the day i meet here to do the estimate and she asked if she could pay at the end of the month. So a month goes by i send a bill .... never get a check or call the second goes by another bill... no check i called got no call back and for some reason i continued services for another month. I called and got no answer so i cancelled the service and sent another invoice. To make a long story short the lady rented her house out to some other collage chicks that call me to try to set up a new account and get it back on the schedule. I had them pay ever visit and after a couple months went by i was pulling into the neighborhood and saw a girl that looked like the owner of the house that owed me money, but was hard to tell considering she was cycling and in a spandex racing suit and glasses. So i pull up to the house and see her car across the street and Wait... and Wait. I see her pull down the street and as soon as she sees me she turns around and rides away. So i Wait , 30 min go by and she finally pulls up to here car from the opposite direction , she waves like nothing and load-es her bike onto her car. I asked her what happened and all the sudden she throws 10 different excuses at me and apologies , i then asked her why she was trying to avoid me so she would feel like an idiot. But in the end she conveniently had all the money in cash a paid. Its a good thing she was hot other wise i would have had to get angry.