Iain was not happy about that. "I felt it was unfair he had no faith in my acting skills," he told On Call.

Sounds like they didn't like Iain's tone of invoice...

Working for a small instrumentation outfit a good many years ago, we used to get an occasional swathe of enquiries for spares for a project, usually in a certain geographical area. The routine was usually that an original end user would advertise the need for spares, which would be picked up by a host of one man bands specialising in sourcing odd bits and pieces.

Our outfit had a thorny relationship with one of the small procurement houses. The guy would, effectively, give you an abridged spec for a grain of sand and be on the phone the next day, demanding to know where his detailed quote for a whole planet would arrive. Well, not actually, but you get the idea. At one time he did succeed in winding up one of our internal sales guys to such a pitch that the chap came off the phone, said nothing, walked out of the office and drove to a hilly beauty spot nearby to calm down for a half hour or so. But I digress.

In the instance I'm thinking of, the irritating customer had actually been successful in winning the spares order from the foreign end user and tried to order on us. He baulked when we insisted on payment for the small order by Irrevocable Letter of Credit, so our Finance director simply insisted on cash. That didn't go down well either but the customer eventually relented as he was over a barrel and said he'd send his secretary.

The person who arrived was an absolutely stunning and delightful young lady: tall, elegant, with long curled hair, delicately tinted glasses and the almost obligatory tan secret agent overcoat. She could have stepped straight out of a 70s spy movie. It kinda made up for some of the angst.

I heard of a contractor who was asked to quote for a job. The contractor didn't want the job but reluctantly submitted a quote after applying an eye-watering mark up (Several hundred percent I was led to believe). The contractor was gobsmacked when the client immediately turned around and said "When can you start?"

The contractor didn't want the job - but the amount of money they were going to make was too large to turn down.

We all have a price, don't we?

Everyone has a price. It is just some people have a very low one...

Been there, done that, did the overtime to make it happen! Only time I've seen my bank balance say "FULL".

"She could have stepped straight out of a 70s spy movie. It kinda made up for some of the angst."

You didn't realise she was the real chief and the other guy was just a front man? And haven't you noticed the same cars following you around ever since?

Ahh yes..

I have deleted a user laptop object out of active directory as they p1$$ed me off many moons ago.

Story goes....

Call log X isn't working, unable to fix via remote, asked user to come onto site, User said far to busy and will get back to me.

User then logs a complaint issue not fixed, So repeat step above,

I then go on leave, but before I delete the laptop.

This then kills the laptop from AD and direct access stops working.

Then they are forced in (And to make sure I reset their password)

I've dealt with clients who were reluctant to pay their bills a few times.

Our ultimate sanction was our ability to revoke their accreditation with a certain government agency, which would immediately remove their ability to conduct business legally and provoked a tortuous re-accreditation process complete with audits of past actions.

Just mentioning it had an almost 100% success rate and payments were pretty much immediate, I only had to actually use it once

Similar situation, but from the other end. Bailiffs turned up at the office this morning to seize goods.

Company had sacked local staff and off-shored the admin/accounts/HR. It seems that no-one was dealing with the local taxes, etc.

Finance dept. are at the route of this issue, as with most issues companies face.

Back in the days of dial-up Internet, one small, local ISP used to replace web pages of customers who took the piss with a "custom 404" page based on the one built into MSIE, but with one of the reasons for unavailability being "The owner of the website might have been disconnected for non-payment of bills".

That page never had to stay up past lunchtime -- prompt payment always ensued.

Karma, but isn't this technically a crime? They may have permission etc to access the routers, but deliberately crippling the network, falls under Computer Misuse Act?

Well since the story predates internet banking, I think it also predates the Computer Misuse Act

The Computer Misuse Act 1990 would apply. Probably well before internet banking.

It is in consultant to update now...

Not sure either company comes out of this story looking good - The support outfit needed more Iains

"The support outfit needed more Iains"

To be able to afford more Iains they need customers who pay their bills.

Below is the relevant law.

Conditions 1A & 1B are met, as is section 2 A-C. So yes, as per section 6A it's a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment for six months, or an unlimited fine if handled summarily at a Magistrates Court. Or as allowed by 6C if the case is heard at a Crown Court then it's punishable by imprisonment for up to 10 years, or an unlimited fine.

Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act:-

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/3

Unauthorised acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, operation of computer, etc.

(1)A person is guilty of an offence if—

(a)he does any unauthorised act in relation to a computer;

(b)at the time when he does the act he knows that it is unauthorised; and

(c)either subsection (2) or subsection (3) below applies.

(2)This subsection applies if the person intends by doing the act—

(a)to impair the operation of any computer;

(b)to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer; [F2or]

(c)to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data; [F3or

(d)to enable any of the things mentioned in paragraphs (a) to (c) above to be done.]]

(3)This subsection applies if the person is reckless as to whether the act will do any of the things mentioned in paragraphs (a) [F4to (d)][F4to (c)] of subsection (2) above.

(4)The intention referred to in subsection (2) above, or the recklessness referred to in subsection (3) above, need not relate to—

(a)any particular computer;

(b)any particular program or data; or

(c)a program or data of any particular kind.

(5)In this section—

(a)a reference to doing an act includes a reference to causing an act to be done;

(b)“act” includes a series of acts;

(c)a reference to impairing, preventing or hindering something includes a reference to doing so temporarily.

(6)A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable—

(a)on summary conviction in England and Wales, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding [F5the general limit in a magistrates’ court] or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to both;

(b)on summary conviction in Scotland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding [F612] months or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to both;

(c)on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or to a fine or to both.

The important word being "unauthorised".

The terms of business to which the client agreed might very well have included a clause allowing them to employ "enhanced revenue protection techniques" under certain circumstances.

Another important word is "computer". All the wording of the regulation refers to computers but not specific ancillary equipment so does restoring a router to it's factory settings count - No intrinsic damage was done to it, the kit is as it was the day they bought it.

If you take the router apart you're going to find at least one CPU in it.

Depends how you do it. If the customer is delinquent, then they're likely to find themselves an ex-customer. I've done this before and as long as they've been sent reminders and a final demand, ToS'ng them for non-payment is fine. As can be renewing any new contract on new payment terms, or just not renewing them. It gets a bit trickier if there's an ongoing dispute, but if they're not paying for the service, they don't get service. It's also easy to automate, so if billing engine shows late X days, shutdown their interface until finance lifts the hold.

That can also extend to sales activity and I've known a few big names that developed such a bad reputation that nobody wanted to work with them, so they wouldn't get quotes.

At a recent networking event, a local businessman told me quite candidly that they routinely inflate certain client's bills by 15% and then offer a 10% discount if the outstanding debt is cleared within 20 days. Apparently, it works almost every time - and the extra 5% goes a long way to compensate them for the hassle chasing up the few who hold out. Must give it a go myself one day!

I used to work for a large American corporate who were bad payers at the best of times and who unilaterally decided to extend all payments to 60 day terms. We pointed out that the large suppliers wouldn't accept this and we never paid the smaller suppliers that quickly anyway!

At a European Management conference (in a very nice Amsterdam Hotel) we got our opportunity to make the point that getting a few percent discount for 30 day terms (and sticking to them) was far more beneficial than the gain on stretching payments to 60 days - I don't think it made any difference though.

Way back I worked for a small software house/hardware dealer and we had a couple of customer who were notorious for only paying invoices when they wanted something else. In one case all they ever bought was a single box of paper at a time, which they'd pay for three months later when they wanted the next box! The trouble was it was a small town and most of the customers were also personal friends of the owner so he'd let them get away with things, such as buying a computer from Dixons instead of from us, but then expecting us to set it up for free. Inevitably the business didn't survive.

If they were actual friends, they wouldn't freeload and would make a point of buying from him and paying their bills on time.

He learned his lesson the hard way.

Heard a story from a bloke running a small IT consulting business. He had this one client who refused to pay for the server & PCs he'd installed claiming there were problems and incomplete work. One day, he rocked up at the client's office in a van and said he was coming to take away all the PCs and server due to non-payment and their terms of business clearly state that title remains with him until full payment is received. It took the customer a few seconds to realise the bloke wasn't bluffing and was serious about removing all the kit then the customer paid up in full there and then.

If I remember correctly, this sadly isn't legal. To be able to seize the goods from their premises, you need a court order - otherwise they can just refuse to let you in. So they simply have the right to say "nope" - and keep your stuff. It's (Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!) 25 years since I did credit control though so memory may have failed or things may have changed. Of course, if the customer doesn't know this and let's you get away with it, then it isn't a problem anyway.

Don't want to go into too much detail for legal reasons.

Company designed and installed automated production line for a major European car parts company. The customer continuously prevaricated on paying the final part of the invoice with nonsensical excuses.

The supplied production line had remote access built in for fault diagnosis etc and it got to the point where, after 6 months of not paying the last 120K Euro bill, the line was shut down with the message on the screen saying line will not be reactivated until full payment is received. Payment was transferred within the hour.

As one of Tricky Dicky's henchmen said, when you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.

I'd like more guarantees on contracted labour to be binding both ways; so that if the client does anything during the guarantee period which would have given the contractor just cause to withdraw their labour had it occurred while the work was in progress, the contractor has the right to restore the client's equipment to a non-functional state until the grievance is rectified.

Retroactive Industrial Action, if you will.

Honestly, whatever bills are outstanding, this is just "criminal damage" (in the old days) or computer misuse under current legislation.

I'd be leaving any place that did this, and if they're lucky then on my way out I may not tell their client what actually happened and agree to swear to that under oath.

A former boss was a complete parasite, had a penchant for not paying company bills, then trying to squeeze a better deal from what were usually small suppliers who really needed the money. There were a few times that even worked. Until he tried it with the office landlord, who was not a small supplier but a multi- multi-millionaire based in New York (we were in London). Hillariously, our landlord promptly had the building staff change the locks and lock us out. He flatly refused to unlock the doors until the enitre due balance was settled by bank transfer. Couldn't have backfired more appropriately.

I've had to resort to similar tactics 3 times in my career.

In one case, replacing the client's website with a message stating it was down due to non-payment (even used HTTP code 402) - this was after a LOT of chasing. Got paid within a day.

Another case the client was refusing our calls so we 'encouraged' them to call us by changing their ISP login password and rebooting their router - once the situation was resolved we changed their password back and their router connected. All dealt with within half an hour.

Finally a client who would only ever pay an invoice the next time he wanted something. We'd had enough and wanted rid of them, but as the only firm in the area able to deal with kit they'd got we had a responsibility... so when they had an urgent problem we said "that's fine, we can sort it but due to past issues getting invoices paid, we will need payment upfront" - we got told to F off, which we gladly did. What would've been a £100 service call must have cost them >£2500 to replace kit. That business folded about year later.

"That business folded about year later."

The serial non-payment might have been an indication they were in trouble already.

Had a similar line from a client. I had done the work and the invoice for £lots was seriously overdue.

I had sent reminders and all invoices and statements included (in bold) "We understand and will exercise our statutory right to claim interest and compensation for debt recovery costs under the late payment legislation if we are not paid according to agreed credit terms".

The last time I called them I was told "If we pay you we won't be able to pay our staff" - to which I replied "if you don't pay me, I can't pay me".

They obviously thought, as I was a one-man-band, that they could get away with it.

I contacted a debt collection agency, who, for a fee of £2.50, sent a "letter before action". I have no idea what it said, but funds to cover the invoice, statutory interest and £2.50 fee arrived as soon as it was received.

I later learned that another business that I worked with had the same problem with this lot, so I pointed them to my friendly debt collectors...