You most certainly DON’T have a right not to pay if the driver can’t provide a POD. The only time you may have a right not to pay is if the driver couldn’t provide a POD AND the consignee claimed that the goods hadn’t been delivered. Even then, if the driver could show ‘in the balance of probability’ that the goods had been delivered then you’d have no right to withhold payment.
Posted under Courier Basics, Late Payment
Posted by Alec at 12:02 pm, May 14, 2008
Just because everybody does it doesn’t mean that they have a legal right to do it. You’ve no right to do it unless it was agreed in your precontractual negotiations.
In 20 years I’ve never once been refused payment because I’ve not supplied a POD. 95% of customers couldn’t give a damn about the POD to start with and for the few that do require them it’s not too much of a problem making sure that the driver is aware that we need the POD back ASAP.
The chances of a customer not paying us because of failure to provide a POD are slim to nothing anyway – it’s written into our conditions that we’re not required to obtain a signature on delivery.
You run your show the way you want – just stop spouting this bullshit about your ‘rights’ because, as is so often the case, you’re wrong.
Why did I reply to it? If enough people repeat bullshit enough times and nobody challenges them then a proportion of people will start to believe their bullshit.
If you want to inform your suppliers of your terms then that’s up to you, although a posting that they may not even read on a public forum is hardly a businesslike way of doing it, nor is it likely to count for much if you were to ever try and enforce your imaginary ‘rights’.