Struggling to get payment from a client.

[Rick Christopherson]

after the judge rules in favor of the trades person would there not be an order to pay the tradesperson.
surly failure to do that would be contempt of court  adn result in jail  etc .

Nope. At least not in Scotland and not in the U.S., but I did not look to see if it were true in Ireland or South Africa. The judgment only means that you have the legal right to collect, but the judgement (by itself) does not give you any more power to collect. Enforcing the judgment would take additional legal proceedings if the debtor still will not pay.

 

[Tinker]

I was doing a lot of work for a designer/builder.  i knew he had a rep for slow pay, but his houses were very interesting and the foundations were always very complicated.  where most jobs, i could set up batterboards and lines (This was long before laser levels and GPS) in a couple of hours.  for some of his houses with crazy angles and odd levels, it would take us a couple of days before I could start even doing footing forms.  On one particular job, the house was to fairly cling to the side hill.  There were a dozen or so corners and footings were at something like 29 levels with a 15 foot rise from the lowest footing to the top of the cement block wall that ended up about a foot above the high grade.  The carpenters on the job suggested i get a surveyor to lay out the footings and walls, but i was stubborn.  When I had finished the foundation, the top was dead on the money.  The builder checked levels and no corner was more than 1/8" out of level with the others and the walls were exact within 1/2" on any of the diagonals.  I was quite proud. The carpenters did not have to shm anywhere. the sills came within the edge of the foundation with no overhang anywhere, or no foundation extending beyond the wood. the fireplaces were simple structures with nothing unusual other than i had to get jack hammer to break out level areas for the footings with lots of iron reinforcement and anchor pins into the ledge.

I had to fight with the builder for my money at every step of the way.  i think it had become a game between the two of us.  i always came up with some unusual antic to get him to pay, but i always, in the end, did get my money.  On the job described, the owners threw a roof party for all who had a part in the construction.  The builder let everybody else know about the event but me.  I had been pestering him for several days for my next contracted payment and he kept promising with no delivery.  I had found out about the party and showed up with a bottle of wine for the owners.  They were happy with my work, but did not know of the relationship between me and the builder.

By the time we had all had a few drinks, probably more than we should have, the builder brought out checks for all of his crew (Payday.  You DO NOT mess around with payroll), along with payments to all of the subs.  But----- none for me.  I said nothing.  a couple of the carpenters asked me what was going on , but i did not let on or bad mouth him in any way.  About the time the party was breaking up, i learned the builder was taking the owners to Charlie's Place for more drinks.  Ah Ha!  by the time the three of them got to charlie's Place, i had a table all lined up for >>>for the four of us with drinks already set up.  we had some lively chats over drinks until the builder suggested the three of then go to "Tony's place."   Once again, i already had a table lined up for ... you guessed it.... four.... with drinks already lined up.  By the time we finished those drinks, everybody was at, or beyond their limits and as we headed for the door, i asked the builder, "what am i going to have to do, go to bed with you?"  By that time, the owners realized something was going on between the builder and me.  they said their good byes and i told the builder i was sticking with him until he came across with my payment.

He promised he would have a check for me at 8:00 in the morning (a Saturday) and i could pick it up.  By the time 8 o'clock in the morning rolled around, I had already been waiting in his driveway for nearly an hour.  I was parked around a corner so he did not see me as he and his two kids got into his car and started to drive out.  AND, there I was, cross wise in his driveway.  "I'm late.  will you please move so i can get by."  

"Where's my check?"

"Look, I'm on my way to yankee Stadium with my boys.  I'll pay you tomorrow."

"Sorryyyy.  My truck just will not move."

I got my money.  I did his work for another couple of years until he packed it in and moved to Maine.  He had bought a wooded lot that was sold to him as 30 acres.  After he bought it, he decided to build cabins and sell them on one acre lots.  He had it surveyed and discovered there were, as the story was told to me, 300 acres.  About ten years later he moved back around here, but he passed away soon after.  Even tho i always had hassles with him, I did like the man and I can not ever say he actually gypped me out of any of my pay.  we just always had to spar with each other.  And, his jobs were always an interesting mechanical and design challenge from layout til finished product.  And i ended up with a ton of stories to tell  :
Tinker

 

[Rick Christopherson]

Tinker, that's a colorful story, but you live in Connecticut. All you had to do was file a Mechanic's Lien (Connecticut Mechanic's Lien PDF) and you would have gotten paid long before the homeowner could throw a party. The mechanics lien stops any title transfer, and the bank also would not have transferred the construction loan to mortgage in the event that the homeowner had been the general contractor.

You don't even have to try to collect against a mechanic's lien because the bank will do it for you. They will not issue a mortgage to the buyer if there are any outstanding liens. In many cases, they won't even issue the loan unless they have written lien wavers from all subcontractors, regardless whether a lien was ever filed or not.

Edit: By the way, I once had a homeowner that was acting as the General Contractor. They refused to pay for the cabinets. I came very close to physically repossessing the cabinets during a dinner party, but the Sheriff's deputy I was dealing with went off-duty before I could get a truck to the property. (The replacement sheriff's deputy was not as willing to let me pull the cabinets off the wall like the first one was.  [tongue])

The owner was smug about it when I filed the lien because they already owned title for the property. I thought I was screwed, and wrote it off as a loss. A couple months later I got a panicked phone call from the bank asking me to come out there right away. They were closing on the mortgage in a couple of hours and I had an outstanding lien on the property. They couldn't transfer the construction loan to a mortgage with my lien in place. If I didn't get out there within 2 hours, the homeowner would have lost their interest rate and whatever other penalties may have come about by missing a closing date.

 

[Tinker]

Rick, I knew I could putt a lien on him, but i was really having fun with the way we were going.  I could go on for a long time here with stories about my dealings with that builder.  We parted friends, so I think he was really looking forward to having his fun with me.  The first time I met him (I had known his brother in high school) he was walking along the road carrying an empty gas can.  He had run out of gas and was going to get some.  The closest gas station was five miles away.  I went out of my way to take him to the station and then back to his car.  His top carpenter and I have been friends for over fifty years.  I knew both of his sons and helped them out on several occasions.  A lot of great connections came about over many years as a result of those battles.  Had i liened him and then walked away, I might have missed a whole lot.  I had fun along the way.

The only time i got a lawyer onto the guy was over a battle about construction.  He was trying to cheat on a code thing and I would have been affected.  We went round and round on it and i finally got a lawyer to write up a release and had the builder sign it.  I got the signature and then he thought better of it and we did things my way.  That was what really got me out of there.  There had been other little violations that i had overlooked, but from that point on, i became downright ornery about working within code.  I guess my construction rep was more important to me than the money problems.  [unsure]
Tinker 

 

[Eli]

I won't get into "Adventures getting paid in the Film business", but my best stories involve teamsters and computers going out of windows, neverending faxed invoices (all night, 'til there's no more toner or paper), endless midnight pizzas and o' dark thirty taxicabs showing up at producer's house, etc. Nowadays I just say payment due immediately on receipt of invoice. I don't let anybody run out much over a grand. Small jobs, small headaches.

 

[waynelang2001]

Some very interesting advise and stories guys.

I finally have a update, He called me yesturday and was trying to play a real tough guy by telling me i must be at his place at 7:45 not a minute earlier or later. So i set up my phone with the exact time and rang his bell at 7:45 on the dot. Again he acted like i had done or said something wrong and accused me of harrasing him. Well first off I have never phoned him on the weekends or on public holidays and everytime i did phone he would cancel the call. All he had to do was answer the first time i called, told me what the problem was, and i would not have hassled him further. Anyway he wanted to go through the job with me and I could already see he was looking for trouble.

One of the jobs I had to do was add two small melamine doors and a carcass between two existing built-in units. Now right off the bat when i came to measure up the job i could see it was going to be a problem because whoever installed the existing units didnt have a clue what they where doing. They pushed the two units right against the wall without a filler piece to rule out the posibblily of the wall being unlevel. This caused the space between the 2 units to be really out of wack. The space between the two units was off by 52mm meaning the top distance was 52mm more then the bottom distance. On the day i measured i told them this but they said it would be fine as it was only the laundry room. So i made the units to fill the space. What has happened now is that my units are perfectly square and level but the old units around it look pretty bad in comparison. He is now complaining about some of the gaps between the new doors and old door. I told him there is not much I can do except to cut new doors that will not be square. He still doesnt believe me that the old units are crooked and declined for me to use my level and tape measure to show him.

It looks like he is fine with everything else because he said " Yeah I guess it will have to do ". For me though i take that as a insult because I know for a fact that the other work I done could not be done better by anyone else and I took the extra time to make the other units far better then what they needed to be.

Bottom line is he wont pay me a cent until I " fix " the perfectly square and level units to match the old crooked unlevel ones.

Just to rub salt in my wounds he told me I can only come on new years day, because ofcourse I dont care about starting the new year off spending time with my family........

I am lucky though in that my younger brother will help me out cash wise until i get payment.

 

[Tinker]

Wayne, be very careful on that one.  If he would not let you show him how far out the original cabinets are by allowing the use of levels and measuring tools, the whole thing has a bad smell about it.  I think you are in bad need of legal help.  I would not think of going there on a holiday without something in writing.  There are a lot of very good people who get into financial problems and have a tough time making payments.  This guy does not appear t be in that category.  Beware and be aware.
Tinker

 

[Tinker]

when I first got involved in the building biz, it was right after WWII and there were still shortages on everything.  A lot of old houses i worked on were far out of level/plumb and sguare.  (My mother's house had no level floors or plumb walls.)  even tho I knew from HS wood shop classes how to make things square, i had to learn right away how to match up our work to the existing work.  Once I started my own masonry biz, i often, thru the years, had to match a new foundation or chimney to fit in with floors and walls of the existing building even tho they were not level or square.  There were always little tricks to make things fit in to look "right."  I am sure that you can find a way to match up with the old work, but you may have a far more difficult time with satisfying that client.
Tinker

 

[waynelang2001]

when I first got involved in the building biz, it was right after WWII and there were still shortages on everything.  A lot of old houses i worked on were far out of level/plumb and sguare.  (My mother's house had no level floors or plumb walls.)  even tho I knew from HS wood shop classes how to make things square, i had to learn right away how to match up our work to the existing work.  Once I started my own masonry biz, i often, thru the years, had to match a new foundation or chimney to fit in with floors and walls of the existing building even tho they were not level or square.  There were always little tricks to make things fit in to look "right."  I am sure that you can find a way to match up with the old work, but you may have a far more difficult time with satisfying that client.
Tinker

Your right tinker, the more I have been thinking about it the more i think there might be away around it. It would involve cutting the doors pretty out of square and it would really bug me to have that in my house, but I think this guy doesnt have a built-in eye level like most of humanity does. Here is hoping that i will come right on tuesday.

One other problem I might have is the eurohinges on the cabinet, I have to cut the side with the hinges on out of square so Im not quite sure how the hinges will react to that.

 

[Sparktrician]

Wayne, be very careful on that one.  If he would not let you show him how far out the original cabinets are by allowing the use of levels and measuring tools, the whole thing has a bad smell about it.  I think you are in bad need of legal help.  I would not think of going there on a holiday without something in writing.  There are a lot of very good people who get into financial problems and have a tough time making payments.  This guy does not appear t be in that category.  Beware and be aware.
Tinker

+1!  I might go so far as to tell him that there would be NO further work until he has paid in full for work already performed AND his check has been honored by the bank, and do it in writing.  I would even go so far as to require him to state in writing that any future work you do has to match existing work that is clearly out of plumb and level, and take copious pictures with a level in place and visible, just to cover you from future challenges.

Many years ago, an individual wrote me a check to cover a small debt.  I immediately took the check to his bank for payment, only to be told that there were insufficient funds to pay me.  I informed the bank manager that she had two options; 1) pay me in full for face value of the check, or 2) mark the check as not payable due to insufficient funds and return it to me for my legal action.  She stubbornly refused both options.  I told her that I was not going to leave the bank until one of the two conditions had been met, and it was very close to closing time, and that if she refused again to mark the check not payable for insufficient funds, I would be talking to her management and the state bank regulators.  I further invited her to call the police, knowing that they'd likely tell her the same thing; pay up or mark the check.  She apparently contacted the individual who wrote the check and came to some accommodation as to him depositing funds to cover the debt, because I received payment in full about 20 minutes after the bank was supposed to close, and I was still in the lobby refusing to leave.  I made a mental note that this bank would NEVER get any of my future business, despite being named The Business Bank. 

 

[Jeff Zanin]

Mr. Lang: I know nothing about you, your client, your business or the circumstances except what has been posted, so please excuse my posting from a position of ignorance.

It seems to me you are falling into a trap in which your interest in the quality of the work, solving the problems of other work done improperly, etc. is impeding what should be your main objective which is to be paid for work that was done and materials that were used. 

It is not unusual for people to emphasize the areas where they have skills and experience (in your case in cabinet work), and to de-emphasize areas where they have fewer skills and experience (in your case perhaps in collections).

So without knowing the details I would suggest you set aside your interest in fixing whatever he claims is wrong at least until you have been paid for the work done.

Jeff

 

[woodguy7]

Wayne, that's some sound advice there.  He obviously knows he has to pay you so stand your ground.  Get any additional work signed off by him stating that it would be out of plumb & square & if he is happy with that then sign a document saying as much.  I still think he should pay you in full first.  Could get messy going back & making the job "worse" ?

 

[harry_]

Not only would I DEMAND payment before I picked up another tool for the guy, I would DEMAND it in C A S H !!!

 

[Tinker]

He still might not pay once you've done!    I would ask him for at least some of the money in case before you start "fixing" wa you done!   I know what I would do once its all over with is Post his name and address all over the Internet  name and shame!!!!  Also let all the locals know how he has treated you.  

People don't like to be shamed if you can get a picture of his face do it and post it on the Internet.

I would!    Here in uk they do it with cowboy builders so can't see why not do it to cowboy clients.

I can't do it but I know if my Dad got involved he would have him beaten up!  Not really best way to go but that's how some people sort things!

Jmb

JMB, I don't know how it is in the rest of the world. But in US, that is a good way to hand over house and business.  A lawyer once told me that if my business with a person is not on the street, i should not even ask him for money owed out on the street.  He could sue, and sue big.  In the man's office would be ok, provided our biz had been run thru his office.  There are actually more laws to protect the deadbeats than there are to protect the guy working hard to make an honest living.  (But i do like your ideas  :)

I did have a young man working for me who sort of filled the doorways that he walked thru. His head almost bumped the top of the doorway and his shoulders swiped the sides.  He told me he would be glad to take car of my collections any time.  Nobody owed me anything at the time, but it would have been interesting.
Tinker

 

[Sparktrician]

Not only would I DEMAND payment before I picked up another tool for the guy, I would DEMAND it in C A S H !!!

No arguing that logic!!! 

 

[Brice Burrell]

Not only would I DEMAND payment before I picked up another tool for the guy, I would DEMAND it in C A S H !!!

No arguing that logic!!! 

I feel differently.  It sounds like Wayne has little or no work, so he has time on his hands and is in urgent need of capital to pay bills.  Sucking it up and working with this guy might be the fastest (and maybe only) way to get paid.  Assuming spending some time on this job isn't going to take away from other paying jobs and he isn't laying out money in material out of pocket, I say give it shot.

I'd say this is a last ditch effort to get paid with the least amount of time invested.  When one's back is up against the wall there is no time for pride or anger to get in the way.   

 

[Scott B.]

Hope it works out for you. We all run into a difficult customer from time to time. Wishing you an amicable resolution. Law of averages says your next customer will be great. 

 

[duburban]

is this not your first time in this situation? i'm 99% sure i've seen another identical post regarding this problem, maybe it was on another forum. is this the same client problem or a new one?

 

[harry_]

Not only would I DEMAND payment before I picked up another tool for the guy, I would DEMAND it in C A S H !!!

No arguing that logic!!!  

I feel differently.  It sounds like Wayne has little or no work, so he has time on his hands and is in urgent need of capital to pay bills.  Sucking it up and working with this guy might be the fastest (and maybe only) way to get paid.  Assuming spending some time on this job isn't going to take away from other paying jobs and he isn't laying out money in material out of pocket, I say give it shot.

I'd say this is a last ditch effort to get paid with the least amount of time invested.  When one's back is up against the wall there is no time for pride or anger to get in the way.    

Yeah Brice, I can see your point. Unfortunately I only know how to be warm & fuzzy OR prickly. If it were to be a situation of `Hey Wayne, look, happened, can we work out a payment arrangement", I could still be warm about it. When all indicators point to "screw you, I'm stiffin'` ya", I dig in my heels and conduct myself accordingly. It seems to me from content up-thread, that the time for warm and fuzzy has since passed. Only Wayne can decide his comfort zone on how low he is willing to stoop to collect his earnings. This business of showing up on New Year's Day seems like a real small fast moving hoop the guy is trying to make Wayne jump through.

Wayne, maybe a back-up plan of having a "letter of intent to file claim" from a lawyer in your hip pocket might be in order.

[edit: typos]

 

[b_m_hart]

Not only would I DEMAND payment before I picked up another tool for the guy, I would DEMAND it in C A S H !!!

No arguing that logic!!! 

I feel differently.  It sounds like Wayne has little or no work, so he has time on his hands and is in urgent need of capital to pay bills.  Sucking it up and working with this guy might be the fastest (and maybe only) way to get paid.  Assuming spending some time on this job isn't going to take away from other paying jobs and he isn't laying out money in material out of pocket, I say give it shot.

I'd say this is a last ditch effort to get paid with the least amount of time invested.  When one's back is up against the wall there is no time for pride or anger to get in the way.   

If he's asking for work to be done that wasn't outlined in the quote that he provided and I'm assuming was covered on what was signed off on (was it just that you received a deposit?), I think that you should tell him that you'll do whatever work he wants you to, for your customary hourly rate.  If he wants work done on holidays, charge him extra for working on a holiday.  I get it, we all need money... but at the same time, this guy is going to try to avoid paying you after you've done even this.  DOCUMENT EVERYTHING IN WRITING from here on out.  When you go to get your payment, and he doesn't have it, won't give it, etc. - you'll need to go the legal route, and if you're going that way, at least get paid for all of the work you will have done in an attempt to do things the "right way"...