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Comment by 300bps | Hacker News Reader

I was buying a house many many years ago at a time I was self employed. I owned a computer company and my largest client put in an order for 20 computers.

They had Net 30 terms with me so I said to them, "I'm very sorry, I am buying a house and can't float the money for 30 days. I can refer you to someone else to buy them from."

The general manager of the company told me it was no problem, send the invoice directly to him and he would pay me the day he gets the invoice.

I sent AP and the general manager the invoice and they didn't pay me for about 45 days after they received the invoice.

As a result, I barely made settlement on my house - I was literally cashing in change at the bank. I had no furniture, not even a bed and slept on the floor for the first month I lived there.

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Glad they actually paid. I've had similar situations where I'm still waiting for the money 5 years later (I know it's never coming)

Can you sue them? People pretend it’s impossible to sue a large company but that is absolutely false, even for a few thousand dollars.

A few thousand dollars wouldn't be worth the time.

I have a relative who runs a small business. He says that 95% of his clients pay on-time or at least something close to on-time. There's 5% who don't. As a younger man, he said he took a few of these customers to court for claims in the 10-20k range. He wanted the money but it was also the principle of it. After a few such cases, he realized that he was spending time and money in order to recover relatively small amounts. Most importantly, this was taking away from his time running the business. He found it was way more profitable to just let these cases go and focus on what he's good at.

Now, if you are chasing people down pretty regularly, maybe you have a department dedicated to handling these cases and it makes sense. But if it's a once in a while occurrence, a few thousand dollars probably isn't worth the time and effort for an otherwise successful business owner.

Yes, but like others have said, I never thought it was worth it. I like to focus on moving forward.

I have a friend who worked for a large law firm and he told me that even they wrote off some unpaid bills or negotiated discounts. I was shocked to find that even when the lawyers could deal with the legal work themselves, they chose to pass.

That changed my thinking on the topic.

have you ever tried to do that? I paid $19,000 once to sue a company for $8500…

The reason was more to force their hand, but you don’t just “sue a large company” they will play games like ediscovery, and crazy-weird jurisdiction stuff

You sent him an invoice and bought the equipment for him? But you said you can’t do anything until you get paid, not until you send the invoice out to him?

So “Ok, you have check signing authority? Cool. Send me a $1,000 down payment.” The answer would have been “Er, no I can’t actually do that.”

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