Done the work, now to get the payment....

[Pap_sak]

My wife has been working for local newspaper for 5 years...basically she does a lot of their adds for them. She got paid on a per add basis, no adds no pay - on the whole I think between 5 - 12 hours per week. It did work well for ages - but the owner got really behind in payments to her - now it's 5 months worth of work at around R21 000. She has tried to get hold of him for the last 3 weeks with phone calls and emails but to no avail - finally this week she said would not do any work until he makes some sort of payment. He now has said that she would not be getting any more work from him - but he has not mentioned when she can expect payment. She works for herself from home - and R21K is quite a bit of cash. I think we need to start putting pressure on getting back what he owes - the good thing is that we have all the poof in the world of work carried out - hell, they have been published! When my wife spoke to one of the employees there, they said that he also owes some of the employees...

So couple of questions:

I am guessing this amount is too large for the small claims court?
How much would a lawyer roughly charge and would they reclaim the money on a percentage fee?
I was going to threaten to contact all the business that she did adds for to ask nicely if they could contribute to her cost - smart/not smart? That could be very damaging to his business.

We would like him just to pay what he can afford p/m even if it takes a few months - we know business is tough out there. But it's starting to look like he is sticking his head in the sand.

[Dave A]

Some nice suggestions on debt collection here.

[Blurock]

Place an ad in the same paper requesting payment?

[Dave A]

[Pap_sak]

Cheers guys - he might be that hard up that he takes the cash for the add! Thanks for the link - we will see how far we need to go.

A few months ago I could see I was going to run into a cash flow problem - it happens because we often have to order so far ahead - I am placing an order now for jan - jun - 2013 - but the first thing you do to talk to you creditors and come up with a plan. For me, spreading 2 months debt over 4 months paid weekly. For the last 8 month I have been aggressively trying to cut down on money owed to suppliers and have now managed to halve them - I am hoping to eventually be able to pay all suppliers with cash within days - still probably a year away though!