5 Legal Steps Landscapers Can Take If A Client Is Unjustifiably Withholding Fees Payable
If own a landscape design business you will experience negative issues that also befall other business types, and unfortunately, they tend to adversely affect smaller businesses more than they do larger ones. One which causes some of the most angst is when a client refuses to pay what they legitimately owe for the work which has been done, and in this case, it would be for a landscape design.
Now, let us be clear we are not talking here about situations where a client quite rightly refuses to pay for a product or service which does not meet the agreed standards. In those scenarios, we fully support the right of any person or any business to demand that a contract is fulfilled and fulfilled to an acceptable standard.
We are sure that all the landscaping work you do is professional and doubtless has received positive reviews and testimonials from your many happy clients. As such, we are not talking here about a client withholding money justifiably, but them doing so unjustifiably and for no other reason than they do not wish to pay their fee as stated in the contract they signed.
If this were to happen to you, we are sure you are wondering what steps you can take, and our first advice would be to ensure that any step you take is legal. We have seen stories of landscapers taking the law into their own hands and destroying landscaping work they have completed due to a client not paying, and whilst it might produce a degree of satisfaction, it is neither helpful, unlikely to be legal, and worst of all, it will certainly not see your fee being paid.
Assuming you wish to remain on the correct side of the law, you are presumably hoping we are going to suggest ways you can get the client who unreasonably refusing to pay you to do so, and we are, with the following five steps to recover monies owed to your landscaping business.