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Comment by gettingstiffed | Hacker News Reader

I've thought about that a lot - what do I take away from this?

I'm not sure there's anything I really could have done. I was working on 30 day terms (quite common), and I'd worked for them with quite prompt payment for over a year. I probably had ~12-15 paid invoices from them for similar amounts that were paid within 7-14 days of issue.

I stopped working for them upon the issuance of the second invoice in question - so I had two invoices outstanding at that point, 1 that was 15 days past issue (but not contractually due) and 1 just issued.

Do people in multi-invoice contracts really stop work until they have proof of remittance? I've never heard of such a thing - that sounds crazy to me.

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Honestly, if you had that many paid invoices in the past, and the due invoices were not "contractually" due, there would have been no reason for you to get hostile or demand payments. In my opinion you did fine and it's just a case of unfortunate luck.

^ This

I know you edited your post saying you would't, but do NOT do anything to their codebase/website etc. Don't even remotely entertain the idea.

Similarly, don't spout anything libellous incase they end up going on the offensive.

Best thing you could do is pick up the phone and actually call them and give them a chance to respond (they're humans just like you) and if they dodge your calls, go for a debt collection service.

You don't stop work the moment somebody is an hour into arrears, but you do adjust your prices to accommodate the risk of non-payment.

Put it in your contract. "Work will stop on day 11 if payment is not received." This is why you (the contractor) draw up the contract instead of being at the whim of the client. This is not crazy, it's the clients choice if you stop working. It it's important that the project go forward they can talk to their accounts payable person. Otherwise they have little incentive to do anything. Instead of "You'll have to talk to accounts payable about that." it becomes, "Crap, my project is going to slip, I better walk over to accounts payable and get this straightened out."

No offense, but that sounds naive. Have you done any meaningful consulting work?

My experience was that the highest value clients paid somewhere in the net 45 to 90 range, despite contracts stating that we billed net 30 that included penalties and interest. And my experience was that it was actually fairly easy to increase prices by 25%, but extraordinarily difficult to get clients to agree to unusual terms (such as a halt in the performance of the contract in the case of minor payment delinquency).

I'm not saying my experience is the only experience, but frankly the only clients who I could imagine agreeing to those terms were puny, and unsophisticated folks who you probably don't want to work for anyway. The more sophisticated buyers all had a lawyer who would negotiate anything like that out of the contract anyway.

No offense taken. :-) I suspect that my part of the elephant just feels different than your part of the elephant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

Yes, I have consulted for everything from startups to large multinationals but your experience may be more common/normal/relevant for HN readers. With the most recent multinational client, it took some time for my contracts to go through legal but they approved everything without any changes.

If it's a company that's that small before taking work have their owners co-sign liability on your contracts.

So if their LLC(Whatever) fails, they're still on the hook.

Banks do this for every loan my small business has taken. You sign for your company, but you also sign personally. If they won't do this, move on.

Lesson learned.

That's a great lesson - thanks. I've never heard of or considered such a thing, but that's a great way to assure payment without raising prices.

EDIT: I think people aren't giving you enough credit here. Every contract is a negotiation - this clause is just another weapon I can include in my starting offer on a new contract. If people say hey, we won't agree to this provision, I can now say "OK, no problem, my rates just went up 10%."

No offense but I'd never sign a personal liability contract if I were contracting somebody even if I had millions sitting in the bank account. In my opinion that's just a silly idea, akin of asking a VC to sign a NDA.

If you try to do that I can see the company just telling you to go away. One of the reasons to become a LLC/LTD is so you don't have personal liability if the company goes under. It would be a bit stupid to sign that away when you can just hire someone else.

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