Its easy to say don't be afraid to lose business, but when you're starting out, the economy is rough or all you have are the one or two clients, that's a different matter entirely.
One thing I've learned is that you always have to do the leg work, you can't assume someone will do the right thing or keep their word.
Develop a system where even bad clients, can't do too much damage i.e. upfront deposits, milestone-based payments. You have to control cash flow risks, if you are gonna take risks know what risks you're taking and when to get out.
Please don't be them. If you do good work make sure that you get your bills sent on time.
Sadly, while this is true, there are plenty of folks still doing freelance who have not learned this, and there always will be. It's just one of those lessons that quite a lot of people have to learn from experience, even after reading posts like this. The exact same reason why companies will continue to get away with taking advantage of freelance work.
Think of ¡all the exposure! doing this free labor for us will give you! /s
or:
I'll cook you dinner if you do this days of work for me /serious?!
My boss said that the ones who have negotiated the best deals are the ones that are late paying, complain about just about every bill and will write angry letters when my boss index adjust pricing.
He said it taught him to never offer a really good deal for a regular customer (ie where the upside isn't very obvious).
The takeaway here is probably that the fix isn't just "never discount", but it's to screen for the kind of customer who treats a good deal as an invitation to strengthen the relationship.
This is really the key. The "deal" has to have something for both parties. The vendor gets some kind of lock-in, prepayment, guarantee of future business, whatever it is, and in exchange the purchaser gets a discount.
The discount doesn't just come out of nowhere.
That was indeed the point, guess I conveyed it in a poor way.
It's literally just not worth it. Time is the most finite resource that we all have.
It is possible to switch to a smaller VNO with better customer policies. But then your cellular data gets dropped during heavy network congestion, which is probably worse for most of us.
OTOH, one other clear subtext of the story is the "savior" attitude of a lot of tech people, who think that, if they weren't using version control before, think, "oh, I'll just tell them about this great thing, and because it's much better they will definitely listen to me and implement it - it's only logical". But the harsh reality is that "better" things won't affect an org that went along that far and dug themselves that deep.
Never underestimate an org's ability to shoot itself in the foot, even if you think you know better. That includes getting your money from them.
It might have involved OP getting a taxi to the airport and being chased down at the gate, but it would have worked.
And even if it didn't, they would have saved themselves enormous time, money, and stress by following through on their threats if it didn't work out.
As an electrician currently self-stopped (for both non-payment & absenteeism, two months no contact, so far) I'm not budging. When you didn't show up for our last two on-site meetups (and still haven't contacted), I thought about filing a lien... but decided to just keep you from having tenants (by not finishing AC/water/electric). You'll get around to it..?
When I told this LLC/owner "you obviously aren't in a rush because you obviously aren't visiting the jobsite/me" I sort of expected him to show within a few days. Then a few weeks. And now we're entering a few months.
You have weeks of my punchlists (unresolved to do), I have weeks of questions (what do you want?) and you won't even do simple things like turning on power/water.
Fuck you, pay me.
"They don't even use version control..." Yeah? Get the money. The client are "carpetbaggers", yeah okay... get the money.
It's implied that they hired you because they need the help. But they also may have hired you because they need the help and you seem like a sucker they can stiff.