Hi Prahlad,

The story what you wrote is very, very familiar. I have been in such situations with a variety of clients and the worst was a development job that I completed succesfully for a multi national subsidiary in India. ( Even now I feel like naming the company but would not like to descend that low ) This was a retrofitting job on a press to profile the pressing tonnage in 25 programmable time steps. Job completed and machine went into production. Time to get the 25% final payment.

It never came. Registered letters, consumer courts - nothing worked. Even mails to thier principals were suppressed. Finally the blokes paid after the 1 year warranty period was over. It was a different story that we refused the order for the next machine upgrade.

But still in the whole process we learnt a very important lesson and that was exactly as Erik said. Any undue force to extract money that is due to you, is to be done with a clear understanding : You will loose the customer for good and not only that, he can make you loose more buisness also.

So in your case if the design is a common one for particular type of machines, then you need to tread cautiously in getting your money. Maybe the customer is in trouble and needs a bit of time to pay. You are the best judge in this.

I do understand that it will be quite irritating to accept that you are on the wrong side of a raw deal. But thats world, Prahlad. Most you win. Some you loose. And if you can sleep the moment you want to, you have lost nothing.

Cheer up.

Raghu