The theme for my week has been "dammit, I should have made that [insert your favorite swear word here] sign a contract." Learn from my too trusting-ness (aka stupidity) peeps: even the nice ones can turn into flakes. My favorite quote from this particular client this week was: "my partner hasn't been able to get back to you for the last few days because his eyes were dilated at the eye doctor." The Pollyanna version of this is: now I have more time for marketing and finding awesomer clients than ever! And hanging out on DP (I've really missed hanging out on DP)! Yay! How has your week been? Do you have a favorite "is he/she kidding?!?" quote that you would like to share? I'm sure I'm not the only one who could use the laugh
No particular quotes here so far (which I think is a good thing), but people can really come with really interesting (read: lame) excuses when they're not willing to pay for the work you did. I also contemplated on asking my clients to sign a contract, but as Jenn and Yo said, a simple written agreement works. Anyhoo, hope you get more reliable clients next time. You could protect yourself too by asking for an upfront payment before you begin a project. If you're not asking your clients for that yet, I suggest you do next time.
The best reply I've ever got is...I'm sorry, I don't have any money to pay you. I'll pay you back when I get the money, with interest. I don't know why I found that hilarious, but I did. Of course, copyscape caught my article within the hour.
I don't have an interesting quote to share, however when few fraudalent clients decide not to pay me they simply dont reply.
One of my ex-clients gave me this excuse: "I have been conned so I cannot pay you" Like what it has to do with me and my work when he was the one who get conned? Now, he conned me. So is this like a cycle? Am I supposed to con someone now? Gee, life is weird.
I don't really have the same issues as I run my business differently, but my favorite line when someone asks for a quote is when they say they will have "lots more work" to get some sort of discount. Always get payment up front and you never have to worry about payment excuses. At any rate, sorry to hear your troubles. The good news is while you can't do anything about the past, you can do something about the future.
Thanks guys I've gotten over my stabby-ness... and am working on other stuff right now. I think what made me so irate over it all was not losing the project or the paycheck but having a client I liked working with pull the flake routine on me. Oh well--live and learn!