What is the longest time it took someone to pay you back or pay a bill?

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Jan 8, 2007
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TN
Weird, we just got payed on an invoice that is about 12 years old. We did some work for someone when we just started and he did not pay the bill. Basically after awhile he ghosted us. Of course we had to move on but we do send an invoice once a year just as a reminder.

Lo and behold we got a check this month and it cleared :) 12 year old bill, I am wondering why they payed all of a sudden because I know it was not a money issue.

My bet is they are going to reach out and try and hire us again.

Anyone ever experience anything similar?
 
Not that kind of time frame, but we go through phases or cycles with some customers where they don't pay, and there's a battle over that, or they give us bad checks, etc. Then they go somewhere else for a while, burn that dealer, then come back and clear things up with us, buy for a while, then get weird again. It's just the way some people/companies seem to operate. They seem to care more about pulling one over on vendors (and probably their own customers too) than building any kind of mutually beneficial business relationship.
 
Maybe they hired a new bookkeeper, who failed to notice the year that the invoice was from.
I don't think it is that because he sent us a conversational email wishing a merry christmas as well. That's what makes me think he wants something in the near future.
 
I can think of one deadbeat that didn't pay me what he owed in the early 90's. Of course I haven't had to deal with him since.

That alone makes the loss tolerable...
 
A jackass friend of mine owes me about $50. We were pretty much brothers for 2 years. About 2 months after dating my wife (met her 7 months prior), we pretty much stopped talking. He’s wanted to meet up and such since then, but I’ve gotten stood up every time.

He did call me one time and wanted car help. He called me another time wanting my wife’s phone number for a vet question. I gave him a number of a guy who he doesn’t like and doesn’t like him.
 
A guy I worked with at the Dodge dealership needed to borrow $20; for collateral, I had his swivel spark plug socket. He paid me $10 back and one day he borrowed back his socket for a job and kept it. He still owed me $10. He ended up dying of a heart attack one morning getting ready for work and I didn't get paid back my $10. He was 43, I was 20.

So now anytime someone wants to borrow money from me I tell them the last guy died and I didn't get my money back.

So the guys at the dealer, were taken a collection, for the family to help pay for cost, and when they asked me I told them I already gave my $10.
 
Not that kind of time frame, but we go through phases or cycles with some customers where they don't pay, and there's a battle over that, or they give us bad checks, etc. Then they go somewhere else for a while, burn that dealer, then come back and clear things up with us, buy for a while, then get weird again. It's just the way some people/companies seem to operate. They seem to care more about pulling one over on vendors (and probably their own customers too) than building any kind of mutually beneficial business relationship.
We had a local multi-millionaire farmer that would do this. Owns/farms around 3,000 acres. No lack of money to pay the bills, it was just all in seeing how big of a jerk they could be. There was no problem in buying ground and paying $12,000 an acre... but they couldn't pay their bills on time.

After years of this behavior, in playing one vendor against another and not paying their bills on time, no one local will even talk to them anymore. Last I heard, they were leasing all their tractors (brand new every year) from a John Deere dealer located about 2 hours away, and they were hauling in all of their fertilizer and seed from just about as far. Their reputation has caught up with them.

Two seasons ago, during harvest, they told their semi drivers that they weren't going to pay them when they were sitting in line at the elevator, waiting to unload. The logic was that since they were just sitting there, they weren't working. A couple of the guys drove their next loads to the elevator, got the trucks in line, then got out of the trucks and walked away. Just left the trucks sitting there and running.
 
Not that kind of time frame, but we go through phases or cycles with some customers where they don't pay, and there's a battle over that, or they give us bad checks, etc. Then they go somewhere else for a while, burn that dealer, then come back and clear things up with us, buy for a while, then get weird again. It's just the way some people/companies seem to operate. They seem to care more about pulling one over on vendors (and probably their own customers too) than building any kind of mutually beneficial business relationship.
I don't get that. Like they obviously were paid by their customer or they wouldn't have let the car go. There was a body shop that would only buy from us, but they had the Hertz account who had them on Net 120 days, we cut them off quick. There is another body shop that is something like $45K 120+ days past due. Funny part is we use him for our body work and we owe him almost the same but won't pay him until he pays us. It is fun to sit back and watch the storm.
 
A guy I worked with at the Dodge dealership needed to borrow $20; for collateral, I had his swivel spark plug socket. He paid me $10 back and one day he borrowed back his socket for a job and kept it. He still owed me $10. He ended up dying of a heart attack one morning getting ready for work and I didn't get paid back my $10. He was 43, I was 20.

So now anytime someone wants to borrow money from me I tell them the last guy died and I didn't get my money back.

So the guys at the dealer, were taken a collection, for the family to help pay for cost, and when they asked me I told them I already gave my $10.
Oh yeah, reminds me of a guy I evicted once. We reached a payment agreement in court and the judge signed off on it. I think he was supposed to pay me a few hundred every month til he paid off the back rent. But I think at the time, both he and I knew that he wasn't going to pay it. I was just happy to get him out of the apartment. Anyway, a couple months later, I heard from his ex-wife he had died. So for a while I went around saying that the last guy I had to evict is dead now. And of course he never made any of the promised payment. I've evicted a few others since so I can't say that anymore.
 
Still waiting to get my deposit back on a house we rented in 2007. The guy didn’t have the money and would pay when he sold the house was the BS story he gave. Didn’t want to bother with court.
 
The owner of the TV station I worked at was like this. He made $15 million flipping a previous station then bought us for $300k, so he had money. He just kept his money separate from the business'.

We lost internet for technical reasons, but when I called Time Warner they asked me if I wanted to pay the $2000 past due bill. Not today, fix our internet please.

We had a service contract on some on-air equipment. Thing broke, I called the company, they said they couldn't help me until the bill was paid. Talked to the station manager and she lied to my face, saying it was paid up. IDK where she thought that lie would get her, as I was just on the phone getting the opposite info. Like, the vendor wasn't helping me, and she wasn't either, so, we're not going to get everything on the air.

Got a letter from my health insurance on the 26th of the month saying in five days I wouldn't have insurance because the bill wasn't paid.

Guy was a joke. Left when I got an out.

Joke was on me though, he flipped the place after I left at a profit and everyone remaining got absorbed by a better affiliate with a union.
 
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