Trump screwing his vendors is messed up...

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Any small business owner or independent contractor can empathize.

[CincyDem]

1. Probably paid those bills pretty quick from Trump-related vendors, that's for sure. n/t

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. If you are around small business owners you know how these clowns work.

You do the job. They say they don't like it. They make you wait so long to get paid that you finally settle for less than what was agreed to...

A lot of contracts are based on good faith. Litigation is expensive. My boss used to say contracts aren't worth the paper to burn them to Hell.

[MineralMan]

5. I've been a freelancer since 1974.

Slow pay and no pay clients are the bane of my existence. They are to everyone who bills after work. It's a plague.

[MineralMan]

3. Cash up front, Mr. Trump.

Cash up front or go elsewhere.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. It is hard to turn away a job.

[niyad]

8. even when you know that you are likely to get screwed over?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. You would be surprised how much risk a contractor would take to get a job.

Of course, if he or she knows they will never get paid they won't take the job.

[MineralMan]

9. It is, indeed. However,

clients of mine who are slow pay get a "payable on reciept" invoice from then on or have to find another sucker to work for them. I have a reputation for being hard nosed about prompt payment for completed work. I have never tolerated it, and found that I could force the issue most of the time.

Know who the worst clients are? Lawyers. Before I do any work for them, I explain my terms up front. They don't get the work product until they hand over the check on completion. That's my policy and I tell them that before accepting the job. They either pay up or I walk away. They get nothing until I see the check.

[Wellstone ruled]

13. Funny you mention the slow pay.

Every Business Account we would pull the Dunn and Bradstreet,one would be amazed at the crap some of these so called Fortune 500 pull. 120 days slow pay,means you have to call their accounts payable person at least twice a week after thirty days. Worst accounts seemed to be Tech related.

[MineralMan]

14. Yup. I finally stopped working for any corporate entities.

Getting them to pay a small invoice was always like pulling teeth. It just wasn't worth it.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

15. Government was the best. They paid quickly or in advance.

[MineralMan]

20. Or never. I used to have a small shareware software

company, with me as the entire company. One of the old DOS programs I wrote turned out to be very useful to many people. Shareware - pay for it if you like it and use it. Well, one day, I got this huge, thick envelope from the GSA. They wanted me to fill out pages and pages of forms to become a GSA vendor. The product cost $15, and some agency wanted to pay for a copy.

I just laughed and changed the license agreement to allow any government agency to use it without payment. Somewhere, I still have that application packet to become a GSA vendor. It was hilarious. I looked at the forms. They would have taken me a week of work to complete. All for a $15 registration fee.

Still...it was interesting. Actually the whole shareware thing was interesting. For a few years, I grossed about $20K in registration fees for the software I created. It was fun, but more work than it was worth. I finally shut it down and changed all of the licence agreements in the distributed versions to make them freeware, in the virtual public domain.

[Wellstone ruled]

17. When I would start pulling my equipment,

then the phone calls got returned and the their account would be paid in full by overnight express. When you have offices that have several hundred employees,certain actions have immediate affects,each and everyone that I had to do this too,went from 120 slow to did you get your invoices paid by the 1st. When you work on Commish,you got to cover your butt.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

16. I was a small publisher and sold an ad to a local office of a yugge cable company.

Since I was a one man business if they didn't pay I didn't get paid. I got so upset that I calling the CEO's office... It worked.

I spoke to one of the executive secretaries, not the CEO.

[Wellstone ruled]

18. Yes,I would call the Corporate Accounts Payable Department

and find out who is really cutting the checks. Once ones patience and resolve to find just who makes the decision,funny how things work to the upside. Most times,I ended up with a National Account rather than just their Local Office or Branch. It is all about relationships and boundaries,like you say,Executive Secretaries rule,my contact info usually ended up on their speed dial

[lapfog_1]

6. From the philosophy of

"Buy Low, Sell High, Collect Early, Pay Late"

Taken to an extreme...

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. My former co-worker's brother did accounts payable for a radio station.

He used to call people who were dilatory in paying and ask them "You know how people get rich? They don't pay their f--king bills."

[scscholar]

11. Exactly. Rich don't pay their bills

They get rich through greed.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

12. "Some" rich.

I would like to think you can become successful without leaving a trail of misery.

[aidbo]

19. When you're waiting for payments from clients/customers that's accounts receivable.

Accounts payable is you paying your bills to vendors. I'm sure your friend did both.

I'm only pointing this out for edification purposes.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

21. Creeping old age...

Cash method
Accrual method

Accounts payable
Accounts receivable

[aidbo]

22. Old age is a creep. Fo-sho. (Mere weeks from turning 40)

[democrattotheend]

23. That's really messed up

It is a sad reality that small vendors who do work for presidential campaigns often don't get paid, because the candidate loses and the campaign runs out of money. But this is especially egregious, because Trump's campaign is still operating! WTF?