I am curious to hear people's views on assessing late fees for overdue payments.
Here is my reason for asking this question. I did a job for a local movie theater. The money was good and the location is less than a 1/2 mile from my house. This is a client who I would love to continue servicing for obvious reasons. Now here's the bad part. I did this job in July 2002 and still have not been paid. The local manager agreed to my terms (Payment due in 30 days or else a $50 late fee + 1.5% per 30 days would be assessed) at the job completion. This is a large corporate theater chain, so all payments come from the corporate office and not the location itself. There was a period when I left one message a day for 3 weeks straight with the accounts payable department and never received a return call. I finally got through to a regional manager who said he would process the invoice, but he needed me to fax it to him. At this point, I would have been happy with just getting paid the original amount, but I was irritated and slapped the overdue fees on the invoice I faxed. I didn't want to create any bad blood, but I wanted them to know that I was serious. Was this a bad move?
Here is my reason for asking this question. I did a job for a local movie theater. The money was good and the location is less than a 1/2 mile from my house. This is a client who I would love to continue servicing for obvious reasons. Now here's the bad part. I did this job in July 2002 and still have not been paid. The local manager agreed to my terms (Payment due in 30 days or else a $50 late fee + 1.5% per 30 days would be assessed) at the job completion. This is a large corporate theater chain, so all payments come from the corporate office and not the location itself. There was a period when I left one message a day for 3 weeks straight with the accounts payable department and never received a return call. I finally got through to a regional manager who said he would process the invoice, but he needed me to fax it to him. At this point, I would have been happy with just getting paid the original amount, but I was irritated and slapped the overdue fees on the invoice I faxed. I didn't want to create any bad blood, but I wanted them to know that I was serious. Was this a bad move?