Small unpaid charges can create huge problems when a company depends on parts arriving exactly on time.

A major truck manufacturer approved repeated design changes but refused to pay the slightly higher prices afterward.

Instead of continuing unpaid work, this fabrication shop stopped producing and shipping the parts completely.

Read on for the full story.

You need the parts but don’t want to pay. Right

I worked for a small fabrication shop.

I filled several roles.

One was billing and one was accounts receivables.

Two departments that get the most flack from customers.

We had a machine shop as well.

One of our clients was a rather large maker of a specialty truck product.

They would order certain parts from us to use on the trucks.

This required the machine shop to make the dies and then we would make the parts.

They would constantly make changes.

As large companies have the tendency to do.

Our contract said they would pay for any increase in cost.

Now, the change orders might add 2 to 5 cents per part.

They would say alright and we would produce the new part.

Efficient enough system.

We would then send the invoice for the new part.

Which would get rejected because the contract said the part was 35 cents each, not 38 cents each.

I would have to explain that they had changed the order so they had to pay the new price.

And that likely never went over well.

They would refuse and would only pay the original price.

Finally, I stopped the plant from making the parts that they were not paying the proper price for.

They used a JIT (just in time) inventory system, so they had no backstock in inventory when we stopped shipping.

Seems wildly inefficient.

They called in a panic.

Where were the parts?

We told they refused to pay so we refused to ship.

Hate to hear it, hate to see it!

We went back and forth for a few days, then we had a check and all change orders were approved.

The week they were down cost them several hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The total of the difference between the original price and the new price on the parts was around $250 total.

That’s what corporate bureaucracy will do.

After the contracts were up, they found another machine shop.

Sounds like they’ll likely keep running into the same problem. Let’s see what the good people of Reddit had to add.

Many commenters were able to relate.

Others lamented bad business practice.

And shared similar stories.

One person empathized for the new shop.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a lifeguard who saves a child only to be confronted by parents angry about the paperwork.

And one person felt the story was insufficient.

The fabrication shop stopped shipping parts after the manufacturer repeatedly refused to pay the approved price increases.

After losing hundreds of thousands during the shutdown, the company paid everything, then created another delay by refusing to purchase the necessary tools and dies.

Its plan to save a few cents per part came with an extremely expensive manufacturing lesson.