High maintenance customer

[Scott Walker]

With a new customer I make them buy a block of 5 hours before I do
anything.  Then as I do work for them I charge it to their account.
When they get down to 2 hours left in the account, I bill them for
another block of 5 hours.  I have found that this works well unless you
are going to be doing a big project for someone.  In that case I would
probably make them buy a bigger block of hours initially and make them
buy bigger blocks of hours to replenish their account.  It's not that I
never get exposed to having done work that I have not yet been paid for
but this system limits the exposure and makes the customer commit to
writing a check before anything gets done.


Scott Walker
RAM Systems Corp.
ScottWalker at RAMSystemsCorp.com
Ph: (704) 896-6549
Fx: (704) 896-7458


-----Original Message-----
From:
filepro-list-bounces+scottwalker=ramsystemscorp.com at lists.celestial.com
[mailto:filepro-list-bounces+scottwalker=ramsystemscorp.com at lists.celest
ial.com] On Behalf Of Laura Brody
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 4:49 PM
To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
Subject: High maintenance customer

Greetings all,

   I have just gotten a few business lessons from a high
maintenance ex-customer. I thought that it would only be
right to give everyone here a little heads-up about this
guy. He is a lawyer (my first mistake), specializing in
collections, (how ironic) located in NYC. His initials are
G.L. If you choose to upgrade his filePro user count or
write custom code, I would strongly suggest that you insist
on payment upfront at all times or you too will learn the
joys of working for free. If you choose to do work for him
and want more details about my experience with him, contact
me off list and I will give you an earful.

-- 
Laura Brody
+------------- Hudson Valley Computer Associates, Inc ----------+
| PO Box 859 120 Sixth Street    http://www.hvcomputer.com      |
| Verplanck, NY 10596-0859       Voice mail: (914) 739-5004     |
+------ PC repair locally, filePro programming globally --------+
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