Customer deposit?

[Cirrus]

Thats good , you won't be out of pocket. Cirrus , I'm sure you are a fine ,trustworthy and most excellent guy so please don't take offence at my repy .

As I said before , if you were a builder looking at building me a new kitchen I'd be showing you the door at the mention of paying up front.

I do have difficulty with payment up front .

I assume you do not have a wholesaler account with 30 or 60 day terms which would negate the need for standing out funds for a week.

Deke

No offence taken whatsoever. At this point I don't have my own account at a wholesalers. I use them all the time and have just applied for a large contract which, if I am lucky enough to win would see me having to get an account as the spend would be several thousand a month (and I ain't got that much in my wallet lol). Some people have an issue with funds in advance and others don't seem to. My thoughts on this are that most things we buy that need ordering require a deposit of some sort - from books to cars to sofa's etc and this if from big companies. When I had my own advertising business years ago I used to ask companies who had never used our services to pay in advance for the first transaction as we needed to gauge their reliability and intent. It worked with no problems and maybe I may apply the same principle to my customers now.

 

[bengie]

deposits don't have to be refundable, i've paid non-refundable deposits plenty of times.

 

[Voltimax]

Funny how some people don't want to pay upfront. We have the wrong attitude in this trade and we always shoot ourselves in the foot.

Most successful and profitable businesses take money upfront. At the Karate school I train at you have to pay a monthly fee via standing order if you want to train, if you don't then you won't be allowed to train, and that is how most sporting activities are now.

Think about it, why should you be expected to pay out money for materials and labour and not get something before the job is complete? How do you know they will pay? You don't, so asking for some money upfront is not unreasonable, it's showing trust on both sides. Honestly the electrical trade is in a mess thanks to electricians and their outdated attitudes, no one else is to blame.

 

[bengie]

^+1

i have asked for deposits before on jobs with lots of materials and never had an issue as have never asked for labour upfront, just parts.

i am doing some work for a guy at the moments where i haven't bothered getting money upfront but i work with his sister and have worked for his parents before and know them well enough so i have trust in the job

 

[Lurch]

it is exspensive, i have just got rid of our other business one, 50 a month and 2.5%, the only way you get a good deal is if you pay loads through.

Like I say, need to research it more but one of the first hits on Google - http://payments.totalwebsolutions.com/index.aspx,

 

[wozz]

when i looked into it it was no where near those costs,

 

[paul b b]

i have also found that it took 3 days to hit the account, so dont try to spend the mone the day after you take the payment