Zahlungsmoral

“Zahlungsmoral” in German translates to payment behaviour in English, the way someone typically pays their debts or bills.  When I was teaching Business, one of the early lessons was about the percentage of UK small businesses that cease trading in the first three years, which the textbook quoted as 60% – similar to 2024 statistics released by the Bank of England. Why such a high failure rate? Late payment. Now that I have been ‘The Cycling Curtain Maker’ for some time, my experience of payment behaviours is mixed. Some pay immediately, many thanks to you. Others complain to me that the banking app they use is oh-so-tricky to operate. Some, for unexplained reasons, think I should wait a few weeks. One or two have been happy to order but are then mysteriously uncontactable, so the product languishes in my workshop for weeks (the worst case of this was when something was completed in January and finally picked up in July). It’s not a big workshop, so a buildup of finished projects means I can’t begin the next one. Someone else said that things are done differently in Switzerland, so they’re not paying unless I accept their further conditions. From now on, my estimates will unfortunately require an explicit agreement to my terms, which are here.