[Dixielandjazz] Getting paid.

[Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis]

>>>>The second approach he uses, which I think will work very well in your 
>>>>situation, is that he is paid prior to the performance e.g. I am here to 
>>>>do the gig, hand me the cash now before I go on. This of course would be 
>>>>set in advance as a a condition of the performance.

Normally I have no problem and that is in my contract.  The person hiring me 
isn't always the one who pays.  I fairly often know that the book keeping 
department is on a schedule and they do their accounts payable on the same 
dates and I expect late payment.  It works out but I think in this case this 
venue is making a habit out of not paying.  I wouldn't have slipped up but I 
had a lot of other things to think about when my wife died and she was my 
book keeper who checked on such things.  I'm usually on top of this kind of 
thing and they slipped through the cracks.  I can't believe I did a second 
gig with them but I did.

Your ideas are pretty good and I may give that a try before I do anything 
else.  I may also bombard their fax machine with dunning letters.  This will 
spread through the office and will feed their corporate rumor mill.  If they 
are weak such things may have ramifications in staff dissatisfaction.  They 
may pay me just to shut me up.

I may also write letters to the BBB.  While I'm pretty sure that they don't 
handle such complaints it may flag them as a possible failure waiting to 
happen.  This is also true of the Secretary of State who watches such 
things.  Since entertainment is mandated it might make a wave.  It will cost 
me about ten dollars to put their name all over the place as well as a 
notification to all the similar businesses in town who are on my mailing 
list.   I will also warn everyone I know in the business to avoid them.   I 
have had some results from people who have owed me money in the past who 
have paid up when my machine got rolling.

I'm going to give them a week or so and then I start going after them.  I 
have sent them a letter and invoices.  Next I will take your suggestion with 
a nice follow up phone call to book keeping and I will see how they respond.

There is a possibility that the person that hired me just isn't telling the 
higher ups what she's doing and there is even a remoter possibility that she 
is scamming the corporation in some way.

I understand that it may be not worth going after because of all the trouble 
to collect but if they get away with it then that will become SOP and a lot 
of my friends will take it in the neck too.
Larry
StL
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kevin Yeates" <kyeates at yahoo.com>
To: "Larry Walton" <larrys.bands at charter.net>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 10:39 AM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Getting paid.


Larry,

A friend of mine who is self-employed has told me how he deals with such 
situations. He speaks to the finance department and asks when the cheque 
will be issued. They typically will tell him and then state it will be 
mailed out. He tells them instead of them mailing it out that he'll be down 
that day to pick it up in person.

The second approach he uses, which I think will work very well in your 
situation, is that he is paid prior to the performance e.g. I am here to do 
the gig, hand me the cash now before I go on. This of course would be set in 
advance as a a condition of the performance.

Kevin Yeates
Vancouver, Canada



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