I've declined the last orders I received from Eclipse for this very reason. Several months ago, I warned them that I would stop taking their work if they didn't get their invoices paid up to date and when I received the usual "I've forwarded your concerns to our accounting department" response without any check being received, I started returning their orders to them.
I haven't heard anything from Revelations in a very long time, after I refused commercial orders from them. If they won't pay the bills from residential orders, I'm not about to take any commercial work for them to stick me with.
As for Halo, I don't even know if they are still in operation or not. A couple of years ago their bill went unpaid for many months, despite promises to catch it up. Finally, they sent an order to me and I told them I wasn't doing it until I received payment for their past due invoices. I was promised immediate payment and I made it very clear that I wouldn't release the completed order to them until I received their check. A week later, I got a phone call asking for the order and I repeated what I'd already told her in writing. She told me that she would have my check cut that day and would have someone email me a copy of the check to let me know it had been cut. I told her that I was sorry, but I couldn't take an email of a check to the bank and the work would not be released until their check was in my hand and verified by the bank as being good. Exactly one week after that date, I got another call from her and she was nasty about why I hadn't sent her order. I patiently told her that the order had been done the day after it had been received; it was typed, invoiced, scanned and ready to be sent just as soon as I had my check in my hand. She had the audacity to tell me that she would "have my check cut that day and would have someone email me a copy of the check to let me know it had been cut" and I told her, "No, that's not going to work. I cannot deposit an email and you told me this exact same thing exactly one week ago. When I have the check IN MY HAND, I'll email you the completed order within seconds. Until then, it stays in my possession because I'd rather throw the whole thing in the garbage than release it to you when you have obviously no intention of paying for it." She got really nasty and screamed into the phone at me that her client wouldn't wait any longer for that order. When I pointed out that if she had sent my check two weeks earlier as she had promised, she wouldn't have had that problem, she hung up on me. I did eventually get that check but I never took another order from her and would not to this day unless it came with a pre-paid deposit by cashier's check.
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