# General Business Category > Entrepreneurship and Business Management Forum > [Question] How buearacratic rules start

## IanF

I have just had a situation which has cost me a lot of money. Now this starts another rule to safeguard us. 
What happenned I quoted on a job with a delivery time of *about* 1 week. A new customer placed an order and this time literally. She kept on contacting me after one day asking for her printing. (Now this is printing at cheap prices that I send out to trade printers to keep the costs down, hence the "about" in the quote) Eventually I agreed to cancel this and refunded her, in the meantime the trade printer had started printing this. It took 1 week 1 day. I got caught by bad timing badly. I have tried to limit the loss and the trade printer has helped, but the customer just says tough. In the past with cases like this my customers have always been reasonable, but now is there a new breed customers who are going to be unreasonable. If this is the case a quote will carry another clause about delivery times not being guaranteed.

I know the answer is to find decent customers but it is hard to figure this out with new customers.

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## Dave A

I'm sorry to hear this, Ian.



> I know the answer is to find decent customers but it is hard to figure this out with new customers.


Even existing customers seem to be a bit more of a risk than normal at the moment. Different problem though - timeous payment.  :Frown: 

I go "we're charging COD nowadays" and they go "you've allowed us 30 days in the past." So we give them 30 days and they take.... (you guessed it) much, much longer  :Banghead:

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