I was talking to a stone mason a few years ago about getting paid from customers. He told me a story about what he did on one job when he suspected he might have trouble getting paid.

The job, he says, involved building a new stone fireplace for a customer on a room addition.

The job was completed in the spring and for some reason or another the customer refused to pay the last payment. The stone mason made no attemt to callect at this point.

In the fall of that same year, on a cold fall day, the customer built a fire in the fireplace for the first time since it was completed.

After a while smoke filled the house. The customer, in anger, called the stone mason to let him know of the problem and demanded that the problem be corrected.

After being reminded that the last payment was never made, and some other words, the customer agreed to pay the stone mason, with intrest, if the problem was corrected.

A few days later the stone mason went to the customers home.

After receiving payment... in cash, the stone mason got an extension ladder off of his truck and climbed up to the top of the chimney with a brick in his hand.

When he got to the top of the chimney, he dropped the brick down the chimney breaking a pane of glass that he had installed in the middle of the chimney during construction.

The fireplace worked fine ever since.

I always thought that it would be nice if there were some device that we could install in our electrical systems that we could disable by remote control if payment wasn't recieved.

I can dream. Can't I?? [Linked Image]