Individual Client or Customer fining or charging a Company a penalty fee
What's the primary factor keeping a consumer from handing out fees as liberally as corporations or small businesses do? Power. Can an individual, or more appropriately, what keeps an individual from being able to charge, fine or penalize a Business? If it could be accomplished, but at a high cost, let's assume it's based on principal and not monetary gain. And have a legal entitlement to money back?  No.  You are of course welcome to send your doctor a letter stating that you would like $50 to make up for your two hour wait last time around, but there's no legal obligation for him to pay up, unless he signed a contract stating that he would do so. Corporations also cannot simply send you a fine or fee and expect you to pay it; you must have either agreed to pay it in the past, or now agree to pay it in exchange for something. In these cases, the corporations have the power: you have to agree to their rules to play ball.   However, consumers do have a significant power as well, in well-competed markets: the power to do business with someone else.  You don't like the restocking fee?  Buy from Amazon, which offers free shipping on returns.  You don't like paying a no-show fee from the doctor?  Find a doctor without one (or with a more forgiving fee), or with a low enough caseload that you don't have to make appointments early.  Your ability to fine them exists as your ability to not continue to patronize them. In some markets, though, consumers don't have a lot of power - for example, cable television (or other utilities). The FCC has a list of Customer Service Standards, which cable companies are required to meet, and many states have additional rules requiring penalties for missed or late appointments tougher than that.   And, in the case of the doctor, if your doctor is late - find one that is.  Or, try sending him a bill.  It does, apparently, work from time to time - particularly if the doctor wants to keep your business.
One company owns majority of popular freelancing websites (elance included)  Aside from the race to the bottom pricing happening for projects; customer is always right. Lots of stories of even a pip from a client freezing accounts -- not even just a project, your whole account with any ongoing projects. Everything gone. Thousands lost. Not worth it. No recourse. Not exactly. From OP's X-post, this appears like textbook tortious interference.  If it were me, I'd demonstrate to the customer why they are getting a better deal and at the same time, I'd have my attorney send a C&amp;D to the offending competitor. "I really have to use the business card for personal expenses, please assume that in your answer. This is very hard to believe. You must do that? Why not just have the company pay you $1600 each month? Then you can use that money for whatever you want. Why can't you do this? (I cannot think of a legitimate reason...) How to integrate the personal expenses in company? Anyway, to answer your question, what I've done when I accidentally used my corporate card for a personal expense is to code the expense as a payment to me similar to if a check had been written to me. If you aren't ever paying yourself, then you should just pay the company back the $1600 every month. As a side note, I highly recommend you don't do this. By doing this on a regular basis you are opening the door for piercing the corporate veil. This means that the financial protections provided by the LLC could potentially be stripped away since personal and corporate funds are being mixed. The unfortunate end result is that personal assets could end up being fair game too in a judgement against the company. Even if you aren't an owner, your relative could be considered to be ""using business money for personal expenses"", namely, letting a relative spend business funds for personal use. How to show more expenses and lessen the profit? If you're referring to the personal expenses, then you absolutely do not want to do this! That's illegal and worthy of stiff penalties, which possibly include jail time for tax evasion. Better to just have the company pay you and then the entire payment is deductible and reduces the profit of the company." A $2 fee to push customers towards setting up automatic bill pay is a very different thing than participating in writing legislation which would cripple the internet.   BoA's fee was pure greed. GoDaddy has no sane reason for backing or even participating in SOPA. Verizon wanted people to use automatically bill pay, so they created a fee to punish those that didn't use have recurring payments. Do you really not see the difference between these 3? Verizon just screwed up by not offering an incentive to go along with the punishment. It was a PR blunder, not greed or maliciousness. Summarized article: The London-based investment bank Barclays Bank has agreed to pay penalties of $450 million to settle charges it attempted to manipulate key benchmark interest rates.   The settlement is with the US Department of Justice, the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the British Financial Services Authority (FSA).   Investigators found that Barclays manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) and the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) which measures how much banks will charge each other for loans, and in turn, affects the cost of loans and mortgages to consumers.   Between 2005 and 2009, Barclays staff would base its estimates for the Libor on the requests of its derivatives traders, who wanted to manipulate the rate to benefit their trading positions. The traders would ask their Barclays colleagues to adjust their rate estimates up or down to post a profit for the bank.  The FSA said that Barclays appeared to have a wide acceptance of its derivatives traders lobbying its colleagues and found evidence through a trail of emails and instant messages.   Barclays has admitted its actions fell short of industry standards but it is unclear if there was any impact to consumers.   The FSA is investigating several major banks for similar violations.  * For more summarized news, subscribe to the [/r/SkimThat](http://www.reddit.com/r/SkimThat) subreddit It may be tempting to be financially lenient with your customers as you start to build business relationships, but doing so may ultimately jeopardize your profitability. Establish clear payment terms on all invoices and documents, including a reasonable penalty (start with eight percent) over the invoice amount if the total is not paid within the standard payment terms. That would be lead to eveeel and wasteful litigation.  Youre basically making a pro contingency fee structure argument.  Those incentives exists in private rights of actions which have been whittled away.  Look at the result. I believe the appropriate recourse in this scenario is to bring a court case for breach of contract.   The 1p repricing issue has been admitted as an error out of scope of the purpose of the software. [This is a company's (TradingView.com) customer subscription levels.](https://i.imgur.com/1YIPzOn.gif)  Why do they charge a higher price when customers pay monthly? Monthly increases short term cash flow, right? Why do you think they make prices in such a way that it incentivizes customers to be billed every 2 years? As noted above, this is likely going to need (several) lawyers to straighten out.  I am not a lawyer, but I think one should be retained ASAP. However, in the meantime: The authorized user should not be making any charges.  Continuing to do so at this point may be a criminal offense.  For the protection of any other heirs, this should be brought to the attention of the credit card issuer and law enforcement authorities.  As it stands, the account holder's estate will be liable for the full debt, and the authorized user's estate would be untouched.   Of course, all this could change if other heirs challenge the estate and file civil suits, in which case it's likely that both estates will be eaten up with legal fees anyway. "The OP does not explain ""what we pay for processing the transaction (cost of debiting the customer)"".  Who exactly do you pay?  Someone else, or your own employees/contractors?  I will assume that $0.10 is paid to your own employees. Dr $10cash from money people give you Cr $10 liability to them because it is their money in your accounts. Dr $0.10 cash payment of paycheques or supplier invoices Cr $0.10 income statement Operating Eexpense  Dr 0.20 liability to depositors for fees they pay, resulting in $9.80 remaining liability for their money you still have. Cr 0.20 income statement Fee Revenues" "MD-Tech answered: The answer is in your question: derivatives are contracts so are enforced in the same way as any other contract.  If the counterparty refuses to pay immediately they will, in the first instance be billed by any intermediary (Prime Broker etc.) that facilitated the contract. If they still refuse to pay the contract may stipulate that a broker can ""net off"" any outstanding payments against it or pay out using deposited cash or posted margins. The contract will usually include the broker as an interested party and so they can, but don't need to, report a default (such that this is) to credit agencies (in some jurisdictions they are required to by law). Any parties to the trade and the courts may use a debt collection agency to collect payments or seize assets to cover payment. If there is no broker or the counterparty still has not paid the bill then the parties involved (the party to the trade and any intermediaries) can sue for breach of contract. If they win (which would be expected) the counterparty will be made to pay by the legal system including, but not limited to, seizure of assets, enforced bankruptcy, and prison terms for any contempts of court rulings. All of this holds for governments who refuse to pay derivatives losses (as Argentina did in the early 20th century) but in that case it may escalate as far as war. It has never done so for derivatives contracts as far as I know but other breaches of contract between countries have resulted in armed conflict. As well as the ""hard"" results of failing to pay there are soft implications including a guaranteed fall in credit ratings that will result in parties refusing to do business with the counterparty and a separate loss of reputation that will reduce business even further. Potential employees and funders will be unwilling to become involved with such a party and suppliers will be unwilling to supply on credit. The end result in almost every way would be bankruptcy and prison sentences for the party or their senior employees. Most jurisdictions allow for board members at companies in material breach of contract to be banned from running any company for a set period as well. edit: netting off cash flows netting off is a process whereby all of a party's cash flows, positive and negative, are used to pay each other off so that only the net change is reflected in account balances, for example: company 1 cash flows netting off the total outgoings are 3M + 500k = 3.5M and total incomings are 1.2M + 1.1M + 1.2M = 3.5M so the incoming cash flows can be used to pay the outgoing cash flows leaving a net payment into company1's account of 0." didn't pay the extra underpayment penalty on the grounds that it was   an honest mistake. You seem to think a penalty applies only when the IRS thinks you were trying to cheat the system.  That's not the case. A mistake (honest or otherwise) still can imply a penalty. While you can appeal just about anything, on any grounds you like, it's unlikely you will prevail. No, if you can afford to enforce more rules, you alone pay for that enforcement *only on your own property*. Nobody else pays for your enforcement of rules that only you want enforced.  Customer regulation keeps companies accountable. When you can stop buying from a company who screws over customers, that's accountability. Remember, integrity and honesty is the lifeblood of any company who wants to stay in business for longer than a short period. Those who provide the most value to customers, including the best quality for their money, get the most customers. "The answer is in your question: derivatives are contracts so are enforced in the same way as any other contract.  If the counterparty refuses to pay immediately they will, in the first instance be billed by any intermediary (Prime Broker etc.) that facilitated the contract. If they still refuse to pay the contract may stipulate that a broker can ""net off"" any outstanding payments against it or pay out using deposited cash or posted margins. The contract will usually include the broker as an interested party and so they can, but don't need to, report a default (such that this is) to credit agencies (in some jurisdictions they are required to by law). Any parties to the trade and the courts may use a debt collection agency to collect payments or seize assets to cover payment. If there is no broker or the counterparty still has not paid the bill then the parties involved (the party to the trade and any intermediaries) can sue for breach of contract. If they win (which would be expected) the counterparty will be made to pay by the legal system including, but not limited to, seizure of assets, enforced bankruptcy, and prison terms for any contempts of court rulings. All of this holds for governments who refuse to pay derivatives losses (as Argentina did in the early 20th century) but in that case it may escalate as far as war. It has never done so for derivatives contracts as far as I know but other breaches of contract between countries have resulted in armed conflict. As well as the ""hard"" results of failing to pay there are soft implications including a guaranteed fall in credit ratings that will result in parties refusing to do business with the counterparty and a separate loss of reputation that will reduce business even further. Potential employees and funders will be unwilling to become involved with such a party and suppliers will be unwilling to supply on credit. The end result in almost every way would be bankruptcy and prison sentences for the party or their senior employees. Most jurisdictions allow for board members at companies in material breach of contract to be banned from running any company for a set period as well. edit: netting off cash flows netting off is a process whereby all of a party's cash flows, positive and negative, are used to pay each other off so that only the net change is reflected in account balances, for example: company 1 cash flows netting off the total outgoings are 3M + 500k = 3.5M and total incomings are 1.2M + 1.1M + 1.2M = 3.5M so the incoming cash flows can be used to pay the outgoing cash flows leaving a net payment into company1's account of 0."