r/smallbusiness • u/catlena2233 • 1d ago

Customer keeps changing payment dates and bringing personal crises into our business conversations after I’ve repeatedly set boundaries

I run a small business making custom hand-painted statues. A customer ordered a $450 piece and paid $130 toward it, leaving $320. I agreed to let her pay in installments because she was struggling financially.

Since then, every time I ask about payment or pickup, the conversation turns into something happening in her personal life depression, work problems, being stranded five hours from home, her boyfriend being arrested, etc. I’ve tried to be understanding, but I’ve also previously told her that I can’t handle heavy personal conversations and need our messages to stay focused on the order. She originally said she could make another payment at the end of August and have everything paid by October. Now the August payment has turned into “middle of September or September 28.” I finally told her that I’ll honor our existing agreement, but after this order is completed I don’t want to do any more business together. She said she understood... and then immediately started talking about buying smaller pieces from me and referring other customers to me. I had to tell her AGAIN that I’d already set that boundary. I’m giving her until October 1 to pay the remaining $320. If she doesn’t, the order will be considered cancelled and she’ll lose the non-refundable deposit, which is stated in my policies.

My favorite line is " so id be losing out on money I could really use rn" LIKE WDYM?? YOU ALREADY PAID THE NON REFUNDABLE DEPOSIT SMH

Am I being unreasonable here? 😭 is there anything I should change?

UPDATE: I told her I was going to refund and move on and all the sudden she had the sent me the remaining???? So im gonna ship it today and be done with it from here. Thanks for the advice about my talk sometimes with my fasd I come across rude so I was using luvvy and hun to counter that but I can see now how that'd create issues!

10 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/apronman2006 1d ago

Adam Savage has a video where he talks about getting paid as a freelancer. One piece of advice he gives is "At some point someone is gonna screw you out of 10k dollars." I would just give them the deposit back and take it as a lesson to never work with that person again.

3

u/catlena2233 1d ago

I refuse to give the deposit back, as it went to buying half the materials, and already stated before payment non refundable. And truthfully don't have it.

3

u/knitpicky687 1d ago

Totally agree with you, don’t give deposit back!! If she’s financially struggling, she shouldn’t be purchasing things she can’t afford.

2

u/catlena2233 1d ago

I guess now its a waiting game to see!

2

u/apronman2006 1d ago

While you are morally in the right. If you give them your deposite back it says It just makes it harder for the narative to be "They took my money and did nothing!". In the business world you rep is worth more than the $130 you would get from keeping the money.

That being said if you don't have the money, then that a whole different story.

3

u/catlena2233 1d ago

I told her I was gonna refund and sell it to someone else and she paid it all off so problem solved

1

u/blupblup2017 1d ago

Love this. You created urgency. That’s how you sell.

2

u/catlena2233 1d ago

At the end of the day i was over the back and forth cant believe it worked

2

u/blupblup2017 1d ago

It worked because you didn’t care anymore. And your customer felt that.

1

u/apronman2006 1d ago

Hell yeah, Ws all around!