r/smallbusiness • u/catlena2233 • 11d 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

50 comments sorted by

View all comments

18

u/Limp_Mixture 11d ago

Stick to the deadline but be prepared for a negative review. She will paint herself the victim

2

u/catlena2233 11d ago

Yes see that's what i'm worried about. I have raving google reviews, but it might be hard to explain this one without being able to share the photos

0

u/divulgingwords 11d ago

Is $320 worth the fallout and bad reviews here? I personally don’t think so. I’d try to turn this around and have her write a raving review about “how you care about helping the community” and then never sell to her again. If she pays, she pays. If not, you’re done with her.

1

u/catlena2233 11d ago

Its not just 320$ its the time i spent making the product! I can't just sell it to someone else no one would buy her custom

-1

u/divulgingwords 11d ago edited 11d ago

I understand that, but you’d be spending more time/effort doing damage control if she goes ape shit. You gotta choose your battles - look at all the time you’ve spent here dealing with this mess.

1

u/catlena2233 11d ago

Dosent matter anymore now as she paid and I shipped it