I listened to one of Robb's podcast and read another thread on this forum about payment and it sparked my interest. I'm sure everyone has gone through this at one time or another or is currently going through this presently. I am interested in how each person experienced in the business or relatively new deals with this kind of problem. Now I am not a NWCO but I am very interested in doing this type of work

1) Dealing with late or non-payment or the customer who flat out refuses to pay
2) After laying out ground rules the customer fails to abide by them (I'm not sure what kind of ground rules there would be) I may start another thread on that
3) Customers or their agents releasing animals and then claiming nothing was caught (surely that has happened)
4) Other people besides customers releasing animals like neighbors or AR folk

Now if I missed a category feel free to educate me on some of your customer woes


I feel like this is gonna be a good thread especially for inexperienced NWCOs that may have not experienced much of this behavior yet

A good contract is the bottom line. There are several places on mine that the customer must also initial. One of which quotes state law on tampering with traps, unlawful possession of protected fur bearers etc.
if I have any concerns going in, all of my cages have cables that I can wrap around a fixed object and lock and I have also set cameras with locking cables on particular places.

You can't always tell who will be problematic, but if I do I don't hesitate to pass on the job. Had one guy call on a beaver at his million dollar camp, sounded like from Saudi Arabia or something. Said, "money was tight, had had a lot of expenses," not endearing right off. He was more than an hour away, not somewhere I go often, with beaver in the boathouse, sometimes a tough job to begin with. Then he said, "I will be us in two days and would like to have the beaver gone before I get there." I basically said, so if I hang up, run to the truck and leave right now, which I not, and all goes perfectly, I might get payed. Wonder who was the lucky one to get that job?

You can agree with me or not on this subject and we still will both be right. There are people who just won't pay. You can either waste a lot of time and health on them or you can just be thankful that 98% of your customers love you and express that love with an immediate check.

Fortunately, we are not in a business where one check will make you or break you. I have a friend in the water purification business that was owed nearly his entire profit for the year, ( six figures ) and it became kind of a hardship. (I'm sure it won't surprise anyone that this was a government deal )

If it is important for your business to take someone to court to prove a point, do it. If not, please don't dwell on it. Just keep in mind that more than 98% of the customers you haven't even met yet are wonderful people that value your help and are more than happy to pay your bill. ( And the people that owe you money will probably get run over by a slow moving freight train )

Right on, Paul.

Yep, I don't worry about the very few who don't pay. Karma.

CONTRACT!!
Plus what the wise Wink said.
Plus a good CONTRACT!

I think anyone no matter what type of business your in just has to throw up there hands and say "whatever" and just cut their losses and pick up and go on, all great advice on here, thanks for sharing everyone

One thing I can heartily recommend in most every situation is turning your non-paying customer over to a collection agency. I had one situation that a recall most vividly. The customer felt that by moving to a different state, that he no longer owed me the bill.

Since after seven years, the bill no longer counts against your credit rating, I had a tear in my eye when I received a check from this jerk after six and a half years. Apparently, he needed to get his credit rating fixed in order to get a better deal on a loan or something. That's one for our side!

Flush em down the toilet with all the others

God made pure quill for a purpose.

Scenario: Customer calls and explains his problem...you as the operator explains to the customer that it's hard to diagnose a problem without visiting the property, you inform him of your service charge...so when you show up and look over the property and talk with the owner about your findings and after he ties you up for a while talking in the yard he may decided that your service charge plus the cost of the job would be too much and after you telling him what animal is causing the damage he doesn't feel like he needs your service...and he gives you flak about the service call due to the fact in his mind you didn't do anything.

now there is no contract and its your word against his, how would someone either deal with this or prevent this from happening all together

Explain costs over the phone. Sign contract before you inspect. Use an inspection form, so he gets some value.

X2

Does anyone use Paypal to collect service call/inspection fee before coming out?

The last customer I had that was past 90 days, I shot an email to them on our return policy. Had a check in a week.

No pay or slow paying customers are just a part of doing business. How invoiced problems should be handled will first depend on your registered accounting method with the IRS, accrual or cash.

If your company is a cash based company you cannot claim the nonpayment as a "write-off". For a cash based company, taxes are assessed on how much money you collect. If there is no payment, then it is viewed as no service has been provided and it doesn’t affect your taxable income.

If your company is an accrual based company you have to try and collect payment; however, after a certain amount of time trying you are then allowed to "write-off" the amount not received. The reason here is that accrual companies have to pay tax on services performed regardless if payment has been received. So if you say you did $1,000 worth of work you are taxed on that $1,000 regardless if our when you’ve been paid.

When looking at how to collect payments, look at what the client owes then look at how much time and effort you will have to spend collecting it. Collection agencies take anywhere from 33% - 45% of the collected amount while court cases can end up costing you thousands in lost productivity and court costs.

For instance, if you have a cash based company and a client does not pay their $100 bill you need to ask yourself if it worth going after them or not. Is it worth paying a lawyer to send them a letter? Is it worth turning it over to a collection agency to hopefully get $55 - $67 sometime down the road? Is it worth paying $50 for small claims court, taking time of work to go, winning the judgment, and still not get paid? What if you lose the judgment? Should you put a lien on their house for the amount they owe? Is it better to just forget about them and focus on the next paying customer? There is no right or wrong answer here; it is all on how you want to run your business.

But, if you are an accrual based company and a client does not pay their $100 bill, you don’t have a choice. You will need to try and collect it and it doesn’t matter what method(s) you use.

When I started this response, I purposefully stated invoiced customers, as this is where the paper trail starts. Without an invoice (or payment receipt), it can be argued that there is no customer in which case it doesn't matter what accounting method you've chosen. It now becomes your decision to declare them as a client (make an invoice) and then decide what to do or put it down as a training experience.

For the specific situation of refusal of payment at time of service, I'd recommend calling the authorities and claiming theft if you have any intention of trying to get paid. Most (if not all) states have implied contracts that state you are entitled to payment for reasonable services rendered (as discussed by the attorney at the Cleveland WCT seminar) regardless of a signed contract.

Also, don't think that just because you've taken a credit card number/deposit/charge that it covers you either. All the customer needs to do is challenge the charge and if you don't have a signature authorizing it, you are going to lose it. Again, in cases like this you will have to take a look at the legal issues as well as accounting method to decide how to proceed.

The best way to not get taken advantage of is to collect payments when services are rendered. Collect your service fee immediately after performing services. For larger jobs, collect a deposit at the time of booking and a check the day work starts. Collect a third check when the project is 50 - 75% done with final payment due the day you finish.

Remember, this is your company and you get to set the terms so take advantage of it.

Collect everything no matter the cost or else you establish yourself as a pansy and you will become a mark

Lots of good advice here. These are my personal guidelines:

1. Traps set at the entry point (roofline) makes it pretty hard for most customers to empty traps unless they're really good on a 32' ladder.
2. Comstock traps are hard enough for us to set. Imagine a customer or neighboring AR trying to figure out how to open one with an angry coon in it. If I HAVE to set a trap on the ground it's going to be a tough one to open or one that is secured as well as I can to make it tamper resistant.
3.Electronic monitoring (e.g. Trap-Alert) provides instant notification of captures and documented trap activity that you can print out as proof.
4. Get it in writing, get their signature. Avoid customers you feel won't be paying or won't be paying in full. Uncle Kirk once told me he avoided anyone with the last name of Patel (Indian/Pakistani). That's not really the politically correct way to go about it, since some of them DO pay. But if they grew up haggling the price on everything from groceries to houses, you know you're going to go through it too. Same with shyster used car salesmen. I also avoid the "I'm-calling-for-my-aunt-twice-removed-who-isn't-home-this-month-so-just-do-the-job-and-she'll-pay-you", type of jobs. After a while you get the feel for who intends and who does not intend to pay you when you show up to do a job.
5.If they're complaining about price over the phone, I suddenly become too busy to fit them into the schedule and will refer them to other WCOs who do lousy work.
6. Interestingly, some of the richest people we've worked for were toughest to collect from. Apparently they got that rich by not paying anyone along the way and probably figure their status will make you, the lowly trapper, back down and quit bothering them. So call their bluff and have your lawyer send them a letter. They tend to pay when they see your balls are bigger than theirs.
7. Big Bear's right. I DO tell people that if they don't pay I'll bring their critters back. Amazing that they actually believe it, but that trick works.
8. And when all else fails, Phil's right, pure quill works. It may not get you paid, but sure makes you feel like you got your money's worth out of them.

I guess it all boils down to fighting the battles that you can win, don't make much business sense to spend $300 just to collect $150, but then there again there is principal, I figure with experience you can avoid exercising principal, very nice thread guys learning tons of all of ya'll