Mama’s Boy
I work for a small IT company providing website, email servers, and web software. After a few years of collaboration with the client, our accountant comes to me saying that the client hasn’t paid the monthly fee for their website and mail server. Sometime clients forget to set up automatic transfer when they change banks, or their accountant went on vacation and forgot to tell someone to do it—things like that.
So I called them up to figure out what had happened. One of the first problems was that the main contact was the co-boss of the company, who was actually the mother of the other boss.
Me: Hi there, we haven’t received your transfer from last month. Is there a problem?
Mom: I don’t know what those fees are. I won’t pay it.
Me: These fees are for your website and your mail server.
Mom: We don’t use it. I don’t want it. I won’t pay for it. Click.
Okay! You do not have to be this rude. So we send a registered letter with recorded delivery saying that if they do not pay by the end of next month, we will have to shut down all their services. After a month and a little bit, still no transfer, we shut off everything.
Sure thing, 30 minutes later we receive a call from the boss—AKA the first woman’s son.
Boss: My emails stopped working, you have to fix this please.
Me: Yes, we shut off your server because you haven’t paid your monthly fees for the last two months.
Boss: What? But my mom is in charge off all the suppliers, she should have paid you.
Me: No, she told us that you did not need our services and did not want to pay for it.
Boss: She is crazy! We take care of all our invoices and contracts by emails. Without them we may as well close the company. I will take care of paying you personally from now on. But please start the server back on.
So we did, and 20 minutes later, one of his employees was at our door with a check for the last two months and the upcoming one. And from this point, he always paid us on time.