| Terrible. Liar. Deceiving. Untrustworthy. These are indeed incendiary words, and they were used to make a point, but certainly not to make a personal attack, so I apologize if it came off that way. My point in using language like this was to illustrate how others may perceive you and your business if word of the "Virtual Tony" gambit got out. It's not fun to see things like this written about you, and it can kill your business. In my experience there are two kinds of clients that don't pay on time: clients that genuinely want to pay but can't for a legit reason, and clients that have no intention of paying you and will do anything to weasel out of it. It's the latter that could really use the "Virtual Tony" against you if it ever came to light. These are bad people anyway, and by doing something dishonest in return you are just giving them more ammunition to get away with it. Did you happen to catch the case of Carl Herold on Reddit a month or so ago? He had a deal go south with a client and the guy smeared him all over the internet and almost ruined his business. [1] In that case, Carl was in the right and still had all kinds of harm done to him because of a disgruntled client. Imagine if Carl had pulled the "Virtual Tony" on this guy. I'm guessing Reddit wouldn't have jumped to his aid to help him out because they would've seen him as dishonest. To your point, you are certainly justified in following up with a client if you're not getting paid. And I certainly think there's validity to the idea that a third party, good cop/bad cop relationship could help things turn out better for everyone in the end. What I totally disagree with is making that person up and impersonating him or her to your client. It's a bad road to go down and not worth the potentially devastating hit your reputation would take if it got out. 1- http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ckcjc/reddit_can_... |
It was your response that made me re-think the way I phrased the original article. While I know some people who have been successful using this kind of strategy for years, it's certainly not something I'd generally advocate for all of the reasons you've pointed out.
Carl certainly would have looked more dishonest in that scenario. However as I understand it, his scenario was a partnership with another company. So it may not be directly applicable to my article, which is in regards to service companies acting as vendors to other companies.
One last footnote: in my experience, there is a third kind of client that doesn't pay on time. The apathetic client. This client is often large and deals primarily with much larger companies, or has a billing department in a different country, or is unfamiliar with your company's contract.
In this situation, as others have suggested, a gentle reminder email from accounts@your-compay.com may be a good way to get attention drawn to your pending invoice without personally stepping into the middle of the transaction.
This was the main point I was trying to communicate anyway - the importance of separation between accounts and the day-to-days.