While everyone has heard of the ‘cowboy builder trap’, not many are aware of an even bigger problem, which is the ‘cowboy customer trap’. Perhaps because most people are ’employed’ and don’t like to delve into the mysterious world of ‘self-employed’ and ‘small business owners’ who are, more often than not, teased and unjustified envy.
The ’employees’ and the various ‘government agencies’ mostly assume that all self-employed and small business owners are well-paid leeches of society, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. With all the red tape and cumbersome tax laws meant to clog up these mostly honest and hard-working folks, they really are up against the odds. Just because they are independent freethinkers who don’t mind trading long hours and hard work for their just rewards, they are treated with suspicion on all fronts when it comes to the public and government agencies.
Any freelancer who has gone through a bad time for reasons unrelated to work, illness or family circumstances, will see that it is like drawing blood from a stone when claiming aid from the public treasury. While single parents, drug addicts, criminals, etc. they are offered maximum benefits in the blink of an eye, though (unlike the self-employed and small business owners who have generally paid small fortunes into government coffers because they are relentlessly persecuted to make sure they do), most have never paid a single penny into the system. All they do is take, take, take (because it’s their ‘right’, and the world owes them their lives).
You may think, why on earth do people still want to be self-employed or own a small business if they are treated with such disrespect? They do it because they have the most important value in life. They have “self-respect” and an ambition to be able to support themselves and their family by trading a good day’s work for a good day’s money. But for the last ten or twenty years here in the UK, small business owners and self-employed have been attacked by the very people ‘they’ wish to serve with integrity and honesty; Your clients.
Yes, a new underworld generation that has emerged from a broken society and become an even bigger threat than the ‘Cowboy Builder’ himself. It was recently estimated that in 2008 this despicable ‘sub-society’ owed over £38 billion to small business owners and freelancers across the country. With over 43,000 going bankrupt in the same year, causing heartache and misery in their wake, family homes foreclosed, stress-related illnesses and even suicides due to the powerlessness of our UK laws to uphold common justice.
It has become well known throughout that sub-society that there is absolutely ‘nothing’ that UK Law Lords can do at present to ‘force’ any of these lowlife non-payers to pay. CCJs have absolutely no teeth and defaulters know it. They sit in their homes, chuckling, bragging to their friends and family about how well they’ve managed to get away with it. It’s like reverse snobbery, where the more money you owe, the higher you rank in your sub-society. Meanwhile, there are lives that fall apart because of them.
More and more freelancers and small business owners are being sucked into the ‘cowboy customer trap’ and there is seemingly no way to avoid or escape it.
Bearing in mind that although the ‘Cowboy Customer Trap’ is very real, one must also keep in mind that the ‘Cowboy Builder Trap’ (read cowboy ‘any’ trade or profession) is also just as real, and one is necessary. find a happy and safe middle ground.
There are various ‘name and shame’ websites created on the internet, but these certainly ‘don’t’ help at all, because they are like forums where they attract troublemakers by the heaps who only intend to cause as much destruction to as many people as possible possible without accountability.
Throughout the world of Internet commerce there is the ‘Ascrow’ system in which both parties sign a contract that states ‘exactly’ what is expected of them. When the work, or part of the work, according to the established contractual conditions, is completed to the satisfaction of both parties. Then, and only then, does the escrow system release the relevant funds that ‘must’ be deposited in advance by the person who has ordered the goods or services. (Without exceptions).
In the event of any dispute regarding the quality of the product or service provided, an independent judge must be employed at “cost” to the party ultimately found to be at fault. That would eliminate any unfair interpretation of the terms of the contract and keep the transaction ‘fair’ for both parties.
It doesn’t have to be the escrow system, it could just as easily be a mutually agreed solicitor service that would hold the funds and release them at the agreed payment points. This would make both parties accountable to each other, and would certainly eliminate the cowboy builder and cowboy customer scenario. Those who would not agree to such an arrangement would surely find themselves in one or another of those ‘sub-societies’ that we must surely eradicate.
The ‘FRED67.com Business to Business Referral Club’ is taking a GIANT leap in terms of ‘only’ enrolling freelancers and small business owners who have previously demonstrated their ethical qualities and therefore offers website visitors a safe and secure place. ‘search’ environment where the ‘Cowboy Builder’ has died out.