Re:"therefore, starting now, waffles are now $450.00 each"
by lsc on Tuesday July 24, 2012 @04:10AM
(#4284785)
As another commenter mentioned, it sounds like the waffle maker is more pissed about the slow payment than anything else.
But yeah, that's the thing. when you are a nobody dealing with a big company? net-30 means they start thinking about paying you in 30 days. This is not at all clear to someone without that experience... and if that one big company is how you pay the rent? well, you have trouble. (that's another thing I love about having a lot of small customers rather than one big one. I can be easy about people being late. When I was a contractor, after the 30 days in the 'net 30' were up, I'd just stay home until they fedex'd me a check. I felt all weird, because the customer was paying the middleman, it was the middleman that was sitting on the money for 45 days.)
Note, I don't think this is because they are trying to save pennies in interest. They sit on the payments because as long as they owe me money, they have vast power in any sort of dispute.
Really, both small companies and big companies need to realize this; Groupon needs to understand that they are dealing with people that haven't had to wait on corporate payment schedules before, people that often don't have access to short-term credit. Groupon needs to understand that these people are used to the situation where 'net 30' means 'you will get your money, at the very latest, in 30 days' - and Groupon needs to act accordingly, if they want to play in that market.
Of course, business owners also need to learn that when you deal with a large corporation, the contracts they write are worth nothing; if standard procedure is to mail 'net 30' checks 45 days after getting the invoice, they are going to mail 'net 30' checks 45 days after getting the invoice, and there is nothing you can do about it. If you deal with large companies, you need to keep more operating expenses as available cash/credit than when you are dealing with small companies, and really, you need to have a lot of patience and toleration.
(Of course, this is part of why you charge large companies more than you charge small companies. At the same price? it's simply not worth it to deal with the bullshit.)
But yeah, that's the thing. when you are a nobody dealing with a big company? net-30 means they start thinking about paying you in 30 days. This is not at all clear to someone without that experience... and if that one big company is how you pay the rent? well, you have trouble. (that's another thing I love about having a lot of small customers rather than one big one. I can be easy about people being late. When I was a contractor, after the 30 days in the 'net 30' were up, I'd just stay home until they fedex'd me a check. I felt all weird, because the customer was paying the middleman, it was the middleman that was sitting on the money for 45 days.)
Note, I don't think this is because they are trying to save pennies in interest. They sit on the payments because as long as they owe me money, they have vast power in any sort of dispute.
Really, both small companies and big companies need to realize this; Groupon needs to understand that they are dealing with people that haven't had to wait on corporate payment schedules before, people that often don't have access to short-term credit. Groupon needs to understand that these people are used to the situation where 'net 30' means 'you will get your money, at the very latest, in 30 days' - and Groupon needs to act accordingly, if they want to play in that market.
Of course, business owners also need to learn that when you deal with a large corporation, the contracts they write are worth nothing; if standard procedure is to mail 'net 30' checks 45 days after getting the invoice, they are going to mail 'net 30' checks 45 days after getting the invoice, and there is nothing you can do about it. If you deal with large companies, you need to keep more operating expenses as available cash/credit than when you are dealing with small companies, and really, you need to have a lot of patience and toleration.
(Of course, this is part of why you charge large companies more than you charge small companies. At the same price? it's simply not worth it to deal with the bullshit.)