Yeah it's a difficult situation - - considering the economy plenty of companies are having cash flow issues. If the client gives me a lot of work I tend to give them a bit of slack on payment, however I don't let it go on for too long. I've also recently started charging people a higher start fee (% of total) than usual as some clients have not had the money to finish agreed projects. It's such an annoying side of the business and usually people can't be straight with you. They'd rather say 'soon' or 'tomorrow' rather than being honest and saying 'in a month, unfortunately' or whatever...
Is it contract based? File a lien on the property. I've done a few designs on "good faith" only to get shafted in the end.
On the other end, that person would probably react worse toward the honesty versus hearing optimism/b.s.
Exactly. Place a lien. We pay all our architects and engineers on time because we expect them to finish everything on time.
I've had to move to a C.O.D. policy with most of my smaller clients (I'm an engineer and deal with home builders and architects) because of similar situations. I'm not a bank, and I'm not going to extend credit to anybody, which is in essence what doing work without pay is. It's nothing personal, it's just the only way I can ensure not getting screwed.
In my years in the Land Planning business in the '80's this was SOP. The developers were always working with no money (no personal just corporate liability) telling us they would pay when the project got funded and the banks said they would fund when they had some sales contracts ..... none of which could be done without the conceptual planning and preliminary plats. Of course when the money did flow, everyone would pay themselves first, and us last. When all the money was drained, the corporate entities would just file bankruptcy, including the developer controlled banks. Our other choice was to not get any business. We worked out asses off and were always struggling to make payroll, and could never pay our printing bills so those guys did too. But the banker boys lived large and never went to jail.
