Thread: customers unhappy with a quote/bill.

It may be worth adding on the bottom of your quotes something to the effect that all materials remain the property of you until fully paid for.

donna

Hells Angels debt collection agency. ?

Carl,
not sure about rural fencing, but for domestic type fencing it's classified as building work and comes under QBSA legislation. I presume you have a license. You can download contract documents from QBSA's website and these include documents for additions and variations which should be signed by both parties before commencing any additions or variations. You can set a payment scehdule (you can't get more than 5% deposit) but you can get payments that are directly linked to work/materials deliverd. Ie 5% deposit, 30% when material are on site but before any further work will take place, 20% when all holes are dug and payable before posts will be placed, etc etc etc. At least this way if you've got a scumball customer they can't sting you for too much before you can legally walk off the job. There is a building industry tribunal which makes legally binding judgements in the case of a dispute.

Mick

happens with everything brother and i set up a shop doing video transfer etc 1st wk had woman in for small job swapping photos to dvd then grew to can we do a slide show for her sons brithday anyway long story short after 3 wks work took slide show after lots of changes , and a lot of our time , small bill about $300 but said she would pay on monday after the sons birthday of cousre no show monday called week later said death in family had to go away for a week and of course still waiting for the money so now we have a new policy of a deposite up front of at least a 3rd of the estimate and also no goods till paid was a good lesson to learn when you are starting up a business!

Originally Posted by weisyboy

gday

im on a bit of a rant here so bear with me.

i am a fencing cotractor. and have struck a lot of dificult customers.

The most successfull fencing contractor I know who has made a LOT of money has a unique method of payment. He does a quote and if accepted he then orders the material and when delivered the customer pays for it COD to the supplier not him. He then arrives on site and puts up the fence collecting just the labour and concrete/fixing costs etc. By doing this they are hooked into the job and can't back out and if they make things too difficult he tells them where to shove it and they have to find someone else to erect what they have already paid for.