We have one customer and only one that we had to sue in court and win a judgment. That shut down their ability to bid on some Federal projects so they finally coughed up enough money to buy a driver quality air-cooled 911. Now they are whining that we have not pulled the judgment. We keep telling them that is up to our attorney and when she gets paid her fees (by them) she will get around to lifting the judgment.

They came to us begging for us to do a project again and they were smart enough to send a check for the full amount contingent on us doing the project. If they pay first before we have spent a penny, we will take the money at a slight markup over normal.

We deal with some some "professional engineers" that may have a degree but have no concept of how to give us the exact details of what they want. We have to guess and spend a lot of time hand holding and a ton of email to get the precise details worked out. They get a higher price for the service than the few great customers that send us a shapefile and exact requirements in a simple email. We jump on those and get them done and we get paid by them within 10 days. When they call or email a project and ask if we can do it the answer is always YES, whatever you want. We want more customers like that and fewer idiots and we have indeed fired a few customers. Actually we just double our normal price for the idiots and that usually sends them on their way to bother some other company.

Weeding out the time wasters and red flag customers is a challenge sometimes but doing it right will make life easier.

Love that smell....:p