OMG, I said, "IF", "IF I OWE YOU MONEY".  I didn't claim that I did or not, I was just asking.  Forgive me for asking.  Is that the only thing you read from that post?  I clearly stated that I have a line of credit, I have use just about all of it, I am in the process of paying it down (minimum payments to the bank) and once it's at a worthy enough level, I will take from it again and bring it back into the company so I can pay more researchers with it.

I am not posting for the purpose of a delay payment ploy, I am posting because it seems that there are people in this forum who would rather here something from their client than nothing at all.

But here's yet another issue that I deal with:  CANCELLATIONS

Picture this if you would...
Client sends me order, I send it to you.
The next day the client cancels the order on me, I send you a cancellation.
You say, "too late, here's the search and my bill".
My client says, "sorry, I'm not paying you because I cancelled the search".
So who loses??  The middle man does because if I want more work from this client, I can't push them to pay me and if I want you to do my work, you aren't unless I pay you.

But finally, if I may add.  You stated that I have to let you know 24 hours before, not 10 minutes after.  24 hours before what???  The time you send it back to me???  How in the world would I know that?  We have researchers tell us that they are sending it TODAY, but 2 or 3 days later go by and we still don't have it.  So we are forced to cancel it.  If I ordered dinner in a restaurant and it took 2-3 hours for the dinner to come out so I decided to go across the street to another restaurant, do you really expect for that dinner to be paid??  In an industry where returning a search within 24 hours is becoming a standard, that would mean I would have to cancel the order before I even ordered it.