Payment Up Front

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/denever_new/7346393084/” title=”XMas Cash by Martino Giuseppe, on Flickr”><img src=”https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7079/7346393084_15dc09df6e_n.jpg” width=”320″ height=”213″ alt=”XMas Cash”></a><br />n<br />nI was in a conversation with another dad in our father daughter group lately, a dad who’s also a building contractor. He mentioned that there are many contractors who give the industry a bad name by asking for a lot of money up front, more than what’s required by (California) law. In fact, many times they pressure the client into constantly being ahead in payments. That’s not right, if not legally, then certainly in principle.<br />n<br />nThen I ran across <a href=”http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002468.html” title=”f secure blog”>this post</a> today on the F-Secure blog about malware cleaning software that is malware itself, tells you that you have malware installed on your machine, then asks for payment up front before doing any cleaning of your system, as it promises it will.<br />n<br />nAt the end of the post, it says: “Payment up front? That’s generally a good sign there’s something amiss.” You don’t pay for a haircut before getting your haircut. You don’t pay for the meal at a restaurant before enjoying it, right? I’d say that statement is true in many situations. Something to keep in mind.<br />n<br />n<em>(image by flickr user <a href=”https://secure.flickr.com/photos/denever_new/” title=”martino giuseppe”>Martino Giuseppe</a> under <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/” title=”creative commons”>CC BY-NC-SA 2.0</a>.)</em>