As Financially Deadly as the ‘Cowboy Builder/Business’)
While everyone has heard of the ‘Cowboy Builder trap’, not too many are aware of an even bigger problem, which is the ‘Cowboy Customer trap’.
Maybe because most people are employed and don’t really like to delve into the mysterious world of the Self-Employed and the Small Business owner – who more often than not are the victims of unjustified jibes and envy.
It’s mainly assumed by those employed and the various government bodies that all self-employed and small business owners are well-off, overpaid leaches on society, where in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. What with all the red-tape and cumbersome tax laws intended to obstruct these mainly honest, hard working individuals, they can be really up against the odds. Just because they are independent free thinkers who don’t mind trading very long hours and hard work for their just rewards, they are treated with suspicion on all fronts as far as the public, and government bodies are concerned.
Any self-employed individual who has fallen on hard times through no work, illness or family
circumstances will confirm that it’s like getting blood out of a stone when it comes to claiming help from the public purse. Whereas professional dossers, drug addicts, criminals etc are all offered maximum benefits in the blinking of an eye, even though, (unlike the self-employed and the small business owners who have usually paid small fortunes into the government coffers because they’re persecuted relentlessly to ensure that 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 a living).
You may think, why on earth do people still want to be self-employed or run a small business if they are treated with such disrespect? – They do it because they have life’s most important value. They have “Self-Respect” and a driving ambition to be able to provide for themselves and their family through the trade of a fair days work for a fair days money.
But over the last ten to twenty years here in the UK, the self-employed and small business owners have come under attack from the very people that they are wishing to serve with integrity and honesty; … Their customers.
Yes, a new breed of low-life that has spawned out of a broken society and has grown to be an
even bigger menace than the ‘Cowboy Builder’ itself. It’s recently been estimated that over
£38- Billion was owed to the self-employed and small business owners throughout the land by this despicable Sub-Society. With over 43,000 going bust in the same year, causing heart-ache and misery in it’s wake, with family homes being repossessed, stress related illnesses, and even suicides because of the impotence of our UK laws to uphold common justice.
It’s become well known throughout that sub-society that there is absolutely nothing that the UK law-Lords can do at present to force any of these low-life non-payers to pay up. CCJ’s have
absolutely no teeth and the defaulters know it. They sit in their homes, chuckling away to
themselves, bragging to their friends and families about just how much they’ve managed to get away with. It’s like a reverse snobbery, where the more money that’s owed, the higher the rank in their sub-society…… All the while, there are lives out there falling apart because of them. 🙁
I worked in the home of a chap who had set himself up as a Self-Employed – ‘Consultant’?? Whose sole job was to harrass other Self-Employed, Small Business, Big Business Owners on behalf of their clients to get a deduction from ‘Money Owed’. He got a good percentage of the money that HE had managed to save his clients, so it was in HIS interest to be as persistent as possible to get the very BEST discount he could. He was very proud of his job and took great pleasure bragging to me just HOW MUCH he could earn per week ….. It Was A LOT!!
More and more self-employed and small business owners are being sucked into the ‘Cowboy
Customer Trap‘ with seemingly no way to avoid or escape from it.
Bearing in mind that although the ‘Cowboy Customer Trap’ is very real, we also have to take into account the fact that the ‘Cowboy Builder Trap’ (please read cowboy ‘any’ trade or profession) is also just as real, and a happy and secure middle-ground needs to be found.
There are various ‘name and shame’ websites set up all over the internet, but these are certainly no help whatsoever, because they are just like the forums where they attract trouble-makers by the boat-load who are only intent on causing as much destruction for as many people as possible (with no accountability).
(Very early frank discussions between both parties about whether standards being
acceptable or not ‘should be recorded’. Video, Audio and especially signed & witnessed paper agreements, so that there is absolutely no hiding place when it comes to liability at the time of stage or full payment in a court of Law)
This would hold both parties accountable to each other, and would certainly stamp out the Cowboy Builder, and the Cowboy Customer scenario. Those who wouldn’t agree to such an arrangement would surely place themselves in one or other of those ‘sub-societies’ that we MUST stamp out.
Please ALSO visit ‘The Cowboy Builder Trap‘ before checking out further Pages on this checkfred.com website in the sidebar, footer or menu …..