Scott,

I agree with you wholeheartedly!  Everyone should, in this business climate, re-evaluate our policies.  We are one of the few lines of work where we are expected to give unlimited credit right out of the starting gate.  If you open up a retail business, your vendors will make you pay for all shipments C.O.D. until you have established a good history with them.  Even after years of business, you will be LUCKY to get Net30 terms!  Yet we have many companies telling us we have to accept Net60?  Without any guarantee of payment then?  If you set up a business account at a hotel, you have to make arrangements and prove your ability to pay before you can be direct billed.  There is absolutely no reason for any company to take longer than 30 days to pay their bills.  Look what doing work without guarantee of payment has done to the medical industry. 

The problem is that there is very little support for any kind of "get tough" policy.  I say "get tough", but it is anything but that.  It is simply applying standard (even somewhat lenient) business practices to our industry.  If we try to do it as individuals, we just get shut out and someone swoops in and does those clients work anyway (until they get tired of it and the whole nasty circle repeats itself).  There doesnt seem to be enough people willing to come together to do anything as a group.  Some people just dont care until it affects them.  Some people will just always kiss up to the client regardless of what they are doing to others, hoping that it will benefit them down the road.  There just doesnt appear to be any real solution out there.  That is the thing that is so troubling.

I have always been a person that gives the benefit of the doubt to someone until they have proven that they cant be trusted.  Your endorsement of Wayne does have weight with me.  His posts on here also have impressed me.  I havent ever met the guy, but I do get the feeling that he is genuinely a good guy and has the best intentions.  He strikes me as the kind of guy that wants to do things the right way.  In the business climate of a couple of years ago, I would give him a chance without hesitation.

Let me make this clear, I am not digging on Wayne or anything like that.  There is no animosity and I personally believe he is being very honest.  My reservation is only business related.  As I stated before, being a new company, it is important to know what kind of stability they have.  He stated that it would be 30 to a maximum of 60 days for payment, I believe.  That leads me to believe that they are still dependant on getting payment from their clients before they can pay their abstractors.  Otherwise, he could guarantee 30 day payments.  As I stated before, that completely changes everything.  If any of his clients no-pay or slow-pay, the same will happen to us.  It would be out of his hands.  That is the scenario that I worry about and I believe is at the heart of what Kevin was asking.

That stated, today I received a vendor packet from Wayne.  I havent decided for sure yet whether I will fill it out.  I probably will, but still kicking a few things around in my head.  As I have stated, I am currently trying to keep my client list down to a select few that I can count on and havent been actively looking for new clients.  If I didnt think Wayne was most likely a very good guy, I wouldnt even be considering it and I wouldnt have spent so much time posting here today.  So Wayne, if you read this, please understand that nothing I have said here is personal.  Your posts on here have been well received and people like Scott's endorsements of you speak well for your character.  Best of luck!