Executive summary: trust no clients outside your country. A US law firm, having been asked by me where the payment is for an invoice sent more than a month ago (and clearly marked for payment due on the 19th) replied that checking with accounting resulted in learning that all foreign currency invoices are paid in 120 days. They had previously paid our invoices for both interpreting and translation very quickly, the last translation invoice being paid in about 14 days. They are clearly taking advantage of the physical distance between us, which makes both legal remedies and visiting them difficult and/or expensive. I had originally written my new no more nice guy policy requiring some advanced payment so as to implicitly exclude entities with a payment track record. That will need to be changed. Nobody is to be trusted if they are overseas, least of all US law firms, which are, in my experience, the worst offenders in this regard.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 00:01:32 +0000