How to respond to a customer's demand for payment extension?
In the event that payment is not made by the due date on the invoice then the transaction is essentially null and void and you can sell the work to another client. For your particular situation I would strongly suggest that you implement a sales contract and agreement of original transfer of work of art for any and all future sales of your original works of art. In this contract you need to either enforce payment in full at time of signing or a deposit at signing with payment in full within (X) amount of days and upon delivery of item.  In your sales contract you will want to stipulate a late fee in the event that the client does not pay the balance by the date specified, and a clause that stipulates how long after the due date that you will hold the artwork before the client forfeiting deposit and losing rights to the work.   You will also want to specify an amount of time that you provide as a grace period in the event client changes their mind about the purchase, and you can make it zero grace period, making all sales final and upon signing of the agreement the client agrees to the terms and is locked into the sale. In which point if they back out they forfeit all deposits paid. I own a custom web design business and we implement a similar agreement for all works that we create for a client, requiring a 50% deposit in advance of work being started, an additional 25% at time of client accepting the design/layout and the final 25% at delivery of finished product.   In the event that a client fails to meet the requirements of the contract for the second or final installment payments the client forfeits all money paid and actually owes us 70% of total quoted project price for wasting our time. We have only had to enforce these stipulations on one client in 5 years! The benefit to you for requiring a deposit if payment is not made in full is that it ensures that the client is serious about purchasing the work because they have put money in the game rather than just their word of wanting to purchase. Think of it like putting earnest money down when you make an offer to buy a house. Hope this helps!
"Yeah, exactly. The difference is that Ferrari is making money.  EDIT: to clarify...  - Ferrari sells a niche product to a boutique customer-base willing to pay a premium in terms of both price and purchasing difficulty for exclusive, super-premium cars that are manufactured to artisan standards with little or no regard for cost-efficiency or price-to-value ratio, etc. People buying Ferrari are not looking for a ""sensible deal"", they are people who can afford to pay for something special, rare, and uncompromising. Tesla is in a similar market-position.   - Ferrari actually makes money selling their cars. They do a low-volume boutique business, and charge prices that reflect a low volume of artisan-made specialty product. I am sure that certain special-order customers have to wait some time for delivery, but I drive by a Ferrari dealership every day on my way to work that has maybe 50 Ferraris sitting in a lot, that you can drive off with same-day, if you want. You can literally drive up, test-drive, and buy one tomorrow (if you have the scratch).   OTOH...  - Teslas are cheaper than Ferraris, but they are still deep into the super-premium price category. They are well outside the ""value-proposition"" customer-base. They are also (perhaps even more than Ferrari), in a market segment without meaningful competition. There are several super-premium 2-seaters in the $100-200k price range, but I suspect most Tesla shoppers are not mostly comparing them against Porsches or Vipers or Benzes. The all-electric supercar market is not a highly competitive one.   - There is massive demand for Teslas, as is evidenced by the extremely thin used market, the year-plus-long wait list, and all that in the face of extremely customer-unfriendly sales/distribution and almost zero marketing... That is, people are waiting up in 18-month long lines to buy cars that they can't inspect at a local dealership, have no way to test-drive, and often have never even seen in person, and they are putting down cash deposits to do so, in amounts that could buy some pretty nice sports cars for the deposit alone. Moreover, it's not like Tesla buyers are going to change their minds and get a Chevy Volt or Honda Insight instead (although they might get both).   This is any startups wet-dream:  - You have a product that is not only already in production, but that you have been shipping for several years-- you *know* the tooling, manufacturing, support, and delivery costs, because you have actually been *doing it* for *years.*  - You not only have no issues whatsoever with regards to building a customer-base, you already have paying customers and genuine orders *already booked* through 2014, more than you can keep up with.  - You have a product with massive demand and almost non-existent price-pressure. You've got orders booked over a year out at asking price with virtually zero marketing or advertising, most customers buying site-unseen purely based on concept and reputation, and your customers are paying super-premium prices with no direct competitor alternative.   This is a goldmine. This is the kind of thing that business-school textbooks tell you never happens. Rational-market theory says it's impossible to have a big-ticket product offering with essentially unlimited demand and zero meaningful competition.   Moreover, this is happening in an environment where the business is not only receiving direct gov't subsidies, but where borrowing costs are close to negative in real dollars. A going concern with booked orders and guaranteed revenue through 2014 should, if anything, be *borrowing from banks to buy back equity*, not selling equity to raise capital.   If Tesla needs to raise capital, then something is seriously wrong with the underlying business. As in, wrong enough that its current sales are not only un-profitable, but that currently-booked future sales will continue to be un-profitable for the foreseeable future (otherwise they could just borrow).   You can plead ""startup"" when you have a small customer base but a great concept. You can plead ""startup"" when you first start shipping product in small quantities at low prices. But you can't plead ""startup"" when you have been shipping a product for years, and when you have customer-orders booked years out, at full asking price, with no meaningful price or product-competition." "Theres some major logic missing from this report, it didnt mention how technology is disrupting how everything is being distributed. As businesses become more efficient with technological advances and less dependent on human capital, then so must humans become more efficient and less dependent upon an expected level of income. Whats the demand to keep a human alive and well versus the demand for needing a well paid human laborer? If you are easily replacable, then your value to the company is simply cheap labor. Best example is Walmart, the wealthiest family, the largest employer whose many employees require gov assistance to live due to low wages. The only way this business could even exist is with assitance from the goverment to support its workers. So where do these tax subsidies come from? The article responded with a great point ""There will never be “piles and piles of valuable goods” laying around with no one to enjoy them."" Whoever said that has never been to Walmart with no money. I suppose there will always be ""someone around to enjoy them"" but will there also be less and less people who can afford to enjoy such things? Walmart has already shown what happens. This article points out the old ways of doing things economically but ignores the fact technology creates abundance, not scarcity. Were not currently using that abundance to directly improve humanity on a large scale level but rather the opposite to control supply or scarcity aka profits. When the demand to maintain &amp; control financial power overpowers the desire to care &amp; provide for your neighbor, then the rise of inequality and narcissistic options appear. This buying power is the component of influence to being able to survive very well or simply even remain alive. If my daily wage doesnt provide for my daily needs, then how can I use technology to stay alive? How efficient can we all become before we start to share in the abundance of life together?" In short, yes. Implied volatility will capture any expected upcoming material announcements. There is also supply/demand impact bundled in which may inflate an option price, and by extension increase implied volatility. OTM and ITM options are particularly predisposed to this phenomenon -- which is of course at odds with the traditional BS model assumptions -- the result is referred to as the volatility smile. Implied volatility is quoted as an annualised measure but isn't necessarily an annual value -- it will correspond to the option time period. "Is there a solution here that would allow me to provide him with a   debit card in his name that I could fund, that wouldn't have foreign   transaction fees associated with it (I'd probably be okay with a small   fixed ATM fee).  There are separate issues here.  There is no law limiting bank accounts to U.S. citizens, but most banks will not open an account for a non-citizen outside their declared service area.  There are substantial legal liabilities to the bank in allowing it, whether a citizen or non-citizen.   The difficulty will be compliance with the Patriot Act.  This is an extension of the older ""Know Your Customer"" doctrine.  It is improbable that the bank could comply with the Act without the potential customer being physically present.  You would have to check with your bank in advance as to their policies.  Banks are not required to accept a customer outside their policies. As to waiving the foreign transaction fee, that is very improbable.  Although a handful of institutions do this in specific cases it is uncommon because the bank isn't actually charging the fee, they are passing it along.  With a credit card they collect interest and waiving the fee can be thought of as a reduction in interest income, that isn't possible on a debit card. You would want to make sure you have a scrupulously honest nephew.  You could be held criminally liable for any actions he takes at both the state and the federal level.  U.S. law is global.  A citizen who commits a crime in any country of the world can be charged for it in the United States.  By being on the account you can acquire any liabilities that are created as an accomplice.  This is a bigger issue at the federal level because 4,000 federal laws do not require criminal intent.  Some do not require you to even know the action happened.  Unlike state law which generally requires you intended to commit a crime and had to be aware of it, federal law often does not.  It is also not adequate that the action is legal in Russia if it would be illegal in the United States. If I get a card in my name, and give it to him to use to withdraw money from ATMs, is that legal? What problems might that cause? It is legal, but you are now strictly liable for its use.  See the above answer.  It would probably get shut down anyway when they phone you and asked: ""are you in Russia right now?""  The bank is still liable for you giving away the card.  The bank may close out all your accounts and submit a currency transaction report on you to the Treasury for possible money laundering. Wire the money.  Plan out how much and when, but just wire it." I had a car loan through GMAC and extra money was applied to future payments.   At one point, I received a statement telling me I had 15 months until my next payment was due because I had not marked extra payments as going to principal. "I can't think of any conceivable circumstance in which the banker's advice would be true. (edit: Actually, yes I can, but things haven't worked that way since 1899 so his information is a little stale. Credit bureaus got their start by only reporting information about bad debtors.) The bureaus only store on your file what gets reported to them by the institution who extended you the credit. This reporting tends to happen at 30, 60 or 90-day intervals, depending on the contract the bureau has with that institution. All credit accounts are ""real"" from the day you open them. I suspect the banker might be under the misguided impression the account doesn't show up on your report (become ""real"") until you miss a payment, which forces the institution to report it, but this is incorrect-- the institution won't report it until the 30-day mark at the earliest, whether or not you miss a payment or pay it in full. The cynic in me suspects this banker might give customers such advice to sabotage their credit so he can sell them higher-interest loans. UDAAP laws were created for a reason." Better suited to /r/personalfinance, but you definitely owe the money. Unless you had something in writing that they were going to send a bill to a certain address, it's your responsibility to pay. Hell, even if you did have something in writing that said they'd send the bill somewhere else it's still your responsibility to pay even if the bill doesn't show up. You know you owed them money.  When your parents didn't get the bill, you should have called the company to ask about it. It's your responsibility to follow up since you're the one that owes the money.  What did you think would happen when you went 5 months without paying $312 that you knew you owed? "I'm not sure if this answer is going to win me many friends on reddit, but here goes...  There's no good reason why they couldn't have just told him the current balance shown on their records, BUT...  **There are some good reasons why they can't quote a definitive ""payoff"" balance to instantly settle the account:**  It's very possible to charge something today, and not have it show up on Chase's records until tomorrow, or Monday, or later. There are still places that process paper credit-card transactions, or that deal with 3rd-party payment processors who reconcile transactions M-F, 9-5ish, and so on.   - Most transactions these days are authorized the instant you swipe the card, and the merchant won't process until they get authorization back from the CC company. But sometimes those authorizations come from third-party processors who don't bill Chase until later. Some of them might not process a Friday afternoon transaction until close-of-business Monday.   - Also, there are things like taxicab fares that might be collected when you exit the cab, but the record exists only in the taxi's onboard machine until they plug it into something else at the end of the shift.   - There are still some situations (outdoor flea-markets, auctions, etc) where the merchant takes a paper imprint, and doesn't actually process the payment until they physically mail it in or whatever.   - Some small businesses have information-security routines in place where only one person is allowed to process credit-card payments, but where multiple customer service reps are allowed to accept the CC info, write it down on one piece of paper, then either physically hand the paper to the person with processing rights, or deposit the paper in a locked office or mail-slot for later processing. This is obviously not an instant-update system for Chase. (Believe it or not, this system is actually considered to be *more* secure than retaining computerized records unless the business has very rigorous end-to-end info security).   So... there are a bunch of legit reasons why a CC company can't necessarily tell you this instant that you only need to pay $x and no more to close the account (although there is no good reason why they shouldn't be able to quote your current balance).   What happens when you ""close an account"" is basically that they stop accepting new charges that were *made* after your notification, but they will still accept and bill you for legit charges that you incurred before you gave them notice. So basically, they ""turn off"" the credit-card, but they can't guarantee how much you owe until the next billing cycle after this one closes:  - You notify them to ""close"" the account. They stop authorizing new charges.   - Their merchant agreements basically give the merchant a certain window to process charges. The CC company process legit charges that were made prior to ""closing"" the account.   - The CC company sends you the final statement *after* that window for any charges has expired,  - When that final statement is paid (or if it is zero), *THAT* is when the account is settled and reported to Equifax etc as ""paid"".   So it's hard to tell from your post who was being overly semantic/unreasonable. If the CC company refused to tell the current balance, they were just being dickheads. But if they refused to promise that the current balance shown is enough to instantly settle the account forever, they had legit reasons.  Hope that helps."