Thanks guys. I agree that we will take what we can get while we are getting it. That seems to make the most sense.

Darren

We could get a posse and ride around his house shooting our guns in the air....

I had a buddy that was this monster of an Italian dude. Played football at University of Miami FL with Michael Irvin back in the day. He was in the 'construction' business. He never had any issues with collections! I wished he still lived here, I would have him go with me to visit my customer! He was super guy and did really nice work on high end homes. It was just funny how people would behave around him.

Darren

Darren, why not stop shipping him new orders, or hold his current orders until he pays his debt? I know he's a good client, but eventually your going to get burned operating this way IMO.

Ryan

This is tricky. One worries if by stopping new orders, you are basically kissing your $60k goodbye or "altering" his willingness (as Greg wisely points out), or making it very difficult (read: expensive/legal) to collect.

But being the bank in addition to the supplier is a dangerous business... if your business is not being a real bank.

I understand, my father used to own a large sofa factory and he did this all the time with certain slow payers. As soon as they were put on credit hold the payment came in and then the orders were released.

That's certainly one way to deal with things, but that's not the way I want to do business. I want to respect and enjoy the relationships we have. This goes back to account diversification and if you can afford to drop those types of adversarial clients, all the better.

I have a friend who used to be a large client 3 years ago until his business went bad. He still owes me well into 6 figures (the reason I had to sell my last Camaro) but he has the willingness to pay and I expect I will get paid back every dime but it may take a few years. He has already paid 1/3 of the debt and is clawing his way back. Due to his willingness to pay, he stayed in business when most would have filed BK.

Good discussion here.

Sadly those type of client/customers are a rare breed anymore, that desire used to be somewhat common in business. Now it's too easy to flip the switch and minimize personal damages.

Good for you allowing a person with desire to make it right. Both of you can sleep easier at night. :thumbsup:

My feelings exactly. We can stop, but I think that kisses the money good bye for sure. At this point, there is no incentive for him to pay, other than my AP lady constantly beating on him. We have slowed things down when processing his order and we do not inventory anything lately. It takes several days to process the order where before it was available next day.

Let me make one thing clear. I would not piss on this guy if he was on fire. Unlike Flash and his customer, there is no love lost here. Part of me wants to turn it over to collections just for the headache factor it would bring on him. The flip side is he still owes me 60k and I want my money! I figured it would be a good topic for discussion, so keep it coming!

Darren