There are many excuses customers can hide behind to avoid payment. By doing a little work in advance of the sale you can overcome your buyer’s objection to payment by incorporating favorable Terms and Conditions in your contract.
Reasons for non-payment vary based upon industry. The excuses need not be creative or original. Most often the seller can anticipate the buyer’s objection(s) to payment.
Take the printing industry for example, the supplier who prints plastic bags/wraps for his/her customers. Because of the way the bags are printed, there are deviations based upon size, color, count and more. The deviations are regular occurences in the printing industry and accepted as standard. Yet, when a customer seeks a reason to escape payment, the “standard” variation now becomes an excuse for non-payment.
You can protect yourself from defenses based upon standard industry variations and more by including favorable Terms and Conditions in your contract.
A business owner is going to want to make sure his/her contract includes terms that specifically state the variations and that reasonable variations of the product are acceptable. The Terms and Conditions will have the customer acknowledge that he/she understands and agrees that the variations specified are acceptable. By doing so, the seller can show the buyer that he/she agreed that the variations would be acceptable. And the buyer will not be able to justify a defense in New York Debt Collection using the variation as an excuse to avoid payment.
Terms and Conditions must be reasonable. The purpose of including Terms and Conditions in your contract are to legally prevent your customer from prevailing on certain defenses they may raise in delaying payment to you and, if necessary, litigation later on. They should not scare your customer from doing business with you.
Take for example someone in the commodity business. The Terms and Conditions in their contracts should anticipate fluctuations in market condition and assure that, regardless of the change in market conditions, the customer will be responsible for paying for the merchandise.
For those selling goods, it’s important to put the burden on the client to report any disputes or alleged defects in a short and reasonable time. In that way, you protect yourself from the one of the most common defenses in litigation, that the goods or services were defective or deficient.
Terms and Conditions should dictate how a dispute can be resolved. Understanding not all disputes must be handled in the same manner. For example, certain businesses will find it in their best interest to have disputes resolved by arbitration while others by court litigation. Also, certain issues RE Quality may be resolved by arbitration whereas fee disputes may be litigated.
Appropriately worded Terms & Conditions also protect you and allow you to stop work or cease shipping goods if certain conditions (i.e. Payment) are not met without any further contractual obligations to your client.
Anticipate and incorporate client’s objections to payment. We understand buyer’s objections to payment and how to discharge them by in advance of a non-payment situation by including necessary language in the Terms and Conditions of your contract. Contact FFGN for more information. We have the experience that pays……
