Re: Invoice Issue

[Aaron Cadieux] "If nobody ever bothered to blow the whistle on a company for bad business practices, then there would be no such thing as a company with a bad reputation. $650 may not seem like much to some people, but for others, it means a lot. Why should a company stiffing people out of hard-earned money be allowed to do so without being called out about it?"

Aaron, this is your situation:

YOU have a bill to your employer for less than 1000.00 USD.

YOUR CLIENT (also your employer) hasn't paid YOUR bill.

YOUR CLIENT (also your employer) is apparently telling you they can't pay your little invoice until their client pays the big one.


Isn't the "big business who is stiffing you" your employer? Are you telling me they don't have the cash to simply pay your equipment rental, even without their client paying?

Now, instead of taking this out on the company that ACTUALLY OWES YOU money, you've taken it upon yourself to sabotage the relationship between YOUR CLIENT and THEIR customer. Normally if you were just a vendor, you could potentially lose your client and then lose them theirs and be spoken of in a negative way, similar to what you hope will happen with this evil company...

The bonus in all this is that since you are an EMPLOYEE of the company that supplied the services to the large company, your mentioning their name, their terms and the amount of the job now makes your employer liable for any legal action as well...and THEN you lose your job.

Hey, I know that many companies abuse smaller companies with payment terms, but in this case, it's your employer who is using you for the float...they do business with this client by choice. Maybe they are well aware of how they pay and they price for it...in any event, it's not your call to make.

Keep in mind that just because big businesses have more revenue doesn't mean they have any more net cash by percentage than a small business does, and when their customers are paying them slower than normal, they don't necessarily have an unlimited credit line to absorb all that float themselves either...their bills grew with their revenues of course.

A big business is a small business that now has exponentially larger stresses during an economic downturn.

You can feel justified in yelling this stuff from the tree tops, but business and justice are vastly different things. If a customer doesn't pay in the terms you choose, then you have to figure out what to do about it with them...take the revenue or drop the customer...and maybe lay some employees off to offset the loss in revenue.


Finding new clients is hard these days and finding a job after being dismissed for misconduct is harder....I sincerely hope for Aaron's and his employer's sakes, that this thread DOESN'T make it to page 1 on a Google search.





TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,