vf lemme tell you a little story...There once was a courier in Boston...a big one, had about 50 bike couriers and 23-40 cars at any given time...Guy rented airtime from me on my Hancock site...well make a long story short he stopped paying his bill one day and was still calling for service...service became cod...airtime was unpaid, it was about $2200 total in arrears. I shut him off on one of his busiest days (oh mean ol me ) he refused to pay the bill so I went small claims...I took him all the way to a capius, and paid a deputy to go there at 3:00 on a Friday afternoon...yep he got arrested, spent the weekend in lockup, judge got PISSED at me, (gee your honor I didn't know he was going there on Friday afternoon) I got my money Monday morning. What goes around comes around. Guy even tried to tell the judge he wasn't using his radios, lucky me I had the airtime printouts off the site showing something like 3200 minutes a month usage.
You're in a business that is very similar to mine. Guys like Larry got it made they're not dealing with big companies or complexes etc, they're usually dealing with a homeowner or individual and there's the difference. (Larry don't take offense that I say this) It's one thing to do a job and get payment on the spot, but like you and I both know that's not going to happen with many of the people we deal with every day. Accountants/bookkeepers never in the office, every excuse under the sun not to get a check, not to mention the fact that many times your not even working at the main office it's out in the field somewhere and it sure don't make sense to drive all the way across Boston to go stand and wait to get a check. Plus the fact that if I walked into Channel 5 tomorrow and said ok I'm done with your service call gimme my money they'd laugh me right out of the place. You just can't do stuff like that.
But sometimes it's these people that string you along, sometimes not. I find usually it's the guys like yourself that are scraping by that will pay their bills on time and the rich guys with the bux are usually the one's that stiff you. I know of only a few exceptions to this in 17 years.
Another one that comes to mind was a Police Dept that called many moons ago at 2:35 in the morning because they had a cruiser radio down. I spoke with the Lt on the telephone and troubleshot the problem to what sounded like a bad microphone. Wouldn't change it out of a spare car they had sitting there even though it was a modular telephone style plug. They made me go out there full knowing because I reminded them it was time and a half minimum 4 hours. I fought with these guys for 8 months just to get a po for the invoice because the chief didn't want to pay the bill. I finally got paid then I told him to take his business elsewhere and why. All for a $50 microphone. They knew the cost of the call before I drove out there in the middle of the nite and still didn't want to pay the bill...I don't do any work for PD or FD anymore no way no how because of that. I dropped every one of those accounts and found them new service providers.
It's a whole diff ball of wax when you deal in a service business like ours.
Maine isn't much better. Taxes are alot different up there they just take it in different places. Is a nice place to retire though my dad will tell you that...he looks at Nubble light every day
