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Vent: I read the fine print on a client contract and found a 90 day payment clause buried on page 7
I was going through a new client agreement for my concrete business two weeks ago and almost signed it without reading the whole thing. The payment terms on page 7 said they had 90 days to pay after invoice, not the 30 days we talked about on the phone. I called a lawyer friend in Austin who does contract work and she said this kind of thing is way more common than people think, like it's basically standard practice for big companies to sneak stuff in. She told me that in most states, if you sign it, that clause holds up even if you never verbally agreed to it. So I went back and asked them to change it and they acted like I was being difficult, which tells me they knew exactly what they were doing. I get that agencies need to protect themselves but burying a payment term on page 7 when we shook hands on 30 days feels sketchy. Has anyone here pushed back on a clause like this and actually gotten the client to budge, or do they just walk away?
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kevin_harris7826d ago
It's the same move as those subscription boxes that auto-renew and make you call a special number to cancel, or rebate checks you have to mail in within 14 days. They're not hiding it because they forgot, they're hiding it because they count on you not reading. Gym memberships, storage units, phone plans, all of them pull this stuff. The whole game is making the annoying term just hard enough to find that most people give up. You did the right thing pushing back, and if they walk, you probably dodged a client who was gonna be late on every single invoice anyway.
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