Late Payment of Commercial Debts

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Excuse 25: Our clients have not paid us yet

Applicability

The arguemnt is that the customer cannot pay because they themselves have not yet been paid.

Underlying reasons

Customer has bad cash flow management and fails to enforce payment terms on their own customers.
At the end of the day this is hardly your problem - unless you agreed payment terms that depend on when the customer is paid (don't do that) they have to pay on time.
Customer has agreed longer payment terms with their customer than with their supplier and hence created their own cash flow problem.
That was stupid and they deserve to pay for their stupidity - maybe they will do things more sensibly in future.

Resolution

Obviously you can help your customer by explaining the late payment legislation and that they themselves can expect late payment penalties from their late paying customer (assuming it is a business contract too).
Crediting the penalty is rather pointless - after all they don't lose out as they too can claim penalties, so what are they complaining about.