Comment by thisisweirdok | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thisisweirdok | Hacker News Reader

I'm getting really sick of large corporations essentially moulding bureaucracy to benefit themselves and fuck over everyone else.

I'm also seeing things like popup more frequently like NET90 payment terms... or accounting departments that won't pay someone unless they fill out a form 100% correctly (oh, and BTW if you fill out the form incorrectly they'll sit on their hands and NOT notify you... so you basically only find out via nagging).

If I owed my bank money you think I could sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for them to guess what the proper request format is?

I recently had a company tell me that they only accept invoices ONE DAY A MONTH and there's nothing I can do about it. Uh, excuse me?

Forced arbitration is another wonderful example of course. Just sit around basically in a siege knowing that almost no individual person can outlast you (basically Uber's business model anyway, undercut the competition and put them out of business with time).

You need to CALL OUT these businesses loudly and publicly. This whole, "I'm not paying you for 90-120 days and then I notify you of a typo precisely 91 days later when you ask where the money is" needs to end.

So in that vein: Fuck GE Healthcare. They have NET120 and they will do all the things you and I have described and more in order to put off payment to small businesses for as long as possible.

I didn't get a check from them until their stuff broke (had nothing to do with my software but they thought it did) and I refused to help them until I got paid.

Whaddayaknow, I had a check overnighted to me with early morning delivery!

Hope you told them (after cashing the check for your past services of course) that you won't help them due to their previous payment behavior, or that you require cleared pre-payment at a significantly higher rate.

What happens when you offer a contract that says that net90 is %150 of costs, net30 is %120, net14 is %100, etc and any late payment (typo bullshit or not) has a %20 compound APR billed per month, like a credit card?

Basically a contract that would be fine if the corp doesn't play shenanigans, and wouldn't if they do.

A contract is only as good as your willingness and financial capacity (paying lawyers) to enforce it.

The problem is you are a small provider, and they are a megacorp. There are alternatives for them (all the other small companies), and the corporate terms are say 90 days. No small provider has the leverage to say no. The terms also just aren't up for negotiation, these are our payment terms.

The best I manage is having projects wherey ou bill half up front, and half on completion (or similar), though some companies also don't allow that.

The onyl time that changes is when terms ae totally ridiculous like GE and the 120 days. At that point it just isn't worth it. One client has annoyed me so much with late payment etc. forms, and just being a pain, that I've refused to deal with them again. It isn't worth the time.

They say no and will reject your contract. Now you have to find another project. When you're freelancing there are times when it's very hard to say no because you don't necessarily know when the next job is coming.

The way I've heard works better is to pad the price in the first place, and give "30% discount for prompt payment (net14)". The people making the purchasing decision will use the discounted price, or perhaps they won't be price sensitive at all. The AP people will spot that they can save the firm 30% by paying your invoices early.

LOL

As I was reading the complaint about net 90 I was thinking about GE and the unheard of 120 day terms. I'm glad it isn't just me.

That depends, how much money do you owe the bank? As Getty famously said, if you owe the bank $100, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, the bank has a problem.

The company I work at has only about 100 people, but we sell to large companies like the Fortune 500. Our payment terms have been net 90 the whole time I've worked here. Pain in the ass for reporting, but we'd be loath to do anything that might jeopardize closing a deal.

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