signed contract

[Steve]

I am first going to send him a letter stating that I will go to small claims court. But someone had told me that I might take it to a collections agent. That would ruin his credit. What should I do threaten small claims or a collections agency? You could ask your lawyer client but I think one way allows YOU to do it and collect the full amount plus expenses incurred, the Collection agency will get THEM to do it for a large % of what they recover. Keep us posted.

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Would it be worth putting a clause in your future contracts stating that the customer will have a dispute period of 24 hours to dispute satisfactory completion of the job, and if they fail to contact you within that time period, they have forfeited their right to further complaint? I'm not sure if this would spook people away by putting a "negative" in their mind from the start, but it would solve a bunch of problems, too. Then if they do call you within 24 hours (which they won't, because we're all awesome) you can arrange a time to return, address their concerns, and complete the job to their satisfaction. Thoughts?

[Steve]

I think as we go through life, we get burned on occasions and then we are more wary of things and get more cautious. So if I had just gone through a similar problem, I probably would want to experiment and include some kind of wording to deal with this and try to avoid it from happening again.

Would it work? That is another story.

Steve,

Thanks to you and everyone who replied to my thread. I sent the letter and was waiting for 10 days to see what would happen. I just got paid in full so it took about a month but he finally paid me. I guess the lesson here is if you have a signed contract doesn't give you false confidence that you will be paid. I did get a few more jobs and I had the people sign and prepay me. Thanks so much for doing the pod-cast. I was really just going to chuck this one up to experience. It pays to watch GopherHaul.

Thanks

Tom