Someone hired me here in Switzerland to do a media-related job as, I suppose, a subcontractor. The person that hired me was hired by another company to do a job, and he needed help completing the project, so he hired me to help.
We had a verbal agreement, an exchange of media assets, I did the work and returned the finished work in under 12 hours, satisfying the requirements of the job, my client was happy and I sent an invoice with payment terms of "due upon receipt". I didn't really want the job, but he begged me to do it, it had to be turned around immediately and I had a full plate already.
It's been 7 weeks since the job was completed and invoice sent. End of March I sent him a follow-up reminder, and he told me that since the company that hired him hadn't paid him yet, he couldn't pay me yet. "Soon", he told me.
Checked in today, again, same story, and continued with "since those are the rules of Ticino, that's where it's at. I'll pay you soon."
Besides a Betreibung (I know all about them and how to send them), what "rules" about not paying people until you're paid are there? It sounds like either a) he didn't have the money to pay me then or now, and/or b) he easily *could* have been paid and is just screwing me.
Sounds like he’s having you on. Send a final invoice (with some % interest charge for late payment on it) and tell him if it isn’t paid you’re going to get a Betreibung issued.
If you have delivered any copyright based material you should simply in for him that should fail to pay by say Monday, you will contact the client and instruction them to cease using the material as you hold copyright. In my experience that usually has a sobering effect.
As you don't have any agreement, certainly not one that you can prove, about payment terms the use of the word 'late' is a little odd. Writing the terms on a piece of paper after the fact doesn't really count. In the absence of any other evidence of when you should be paid I would guess "a reasonable amount of time" would be in order. 30 days seems to be the norm but I've seen contracts with 60 days so 7 weeks is heading towards unreasonable I would say. You'll have to wait and unless you gather and/or acquire evidence that an agreement existed for that amount I would say you should consider yourself lucky if you get paid at all. Having said that, it does seem to be a standard Swiss practice to do work with no agreement on costs and payment and then send an invoice, for example if you ask for an electrician to come.
It's not unheard of for freelancers to have a contract that states that payment will be made once the company is paid by the client your worked for.
I was presented with such a contract and refused to sign it on the principle that if the bank won't loan them money with security and interest, why should I do it without either...
The first rule of knocking blood out of a stone is to use a very big hammer! Don’t be nice and understanding, be the mad bas***d that might do anything including messing up the debtor’s relationship with his client and thus cut off his cash flow.
It won't hurt to mention that OP reserves the right to charge for any and all efforts taken going forward, using the cost per hour generally charged for actual work.
OP, as for your "pay!", it's common to set a deadline, like ten days (I've seen five but that seems awfully short).
There's a lot of sh!t that goes down in the Ticino that shouldn't. I wouldn't call it the rules, it's more like systematically not sticking to the rules. People seem to do what they want, until they poke the bear (i.e. someone in authority or someone who knows someone in authority) and gets stuck with the consequences.
The person that hired you shouldn't make his problem your's. Tell him that unless you are paid within 10 days, you will send him a Betreibung. That may focus his mind.
I would have sent an invoice to be paid within 30 days after delivery (pretty standard). Asking for money instantly is pretty unusual.
Still, you can start the execution procedure directly apparently, if they don't pay. That is not the usual way to do things in Switzerland though.
The usual thing is to wait 10 days and then send the first payment solicitation with new terms of 10 days, then after 10 more days send the second solicitation, where you state that if you don't get the money in 10 days you'll start the execution.
Tbh I would never make the assumption that I can just not pay someone until I get paid. If businesses do this among themselves to support each other in difficult times or because some manager needs it to figure in the next quarters' budget, more power to them, but physical people have to get paid.
This guy is basically saying either that he won't pay you if his client fails and wants you to carry his entepreneurial risk, or that he's so out of liquidity and can't pay until the client pays. If that's the case he should admit that instead of being arrogant, and say that you hadn't agreed to terms and he thought he'd get paid within 30 days in order to pay you within the usual 30 days, and then maybe you would show understanding for his customer being slow at paying. With this behaviour he doesn't look professional at all. Depending on which country he's from, he might also think 3 months is normal.