I am an advertising consultant for a major supplier of highway products to highway contractors and city, state and federal highway departments. My client is still selling and delivering a lot of product, but over the past three months, his customers have gotten to be real slow about paying their bills. Any other vendors experiencing the problem?

-- Running (short@ofcash.com), November 10, 1999

Answers

We service install life safety systems in nursing homes. A few are reporting slow Medicare payments to them as a reason for them not to pay us on time. I have not verified the "excuse" this time but it is not the first time we have heard it this year. Would expect to hear it more often and well into next year. Great excuse, problems or not.

-- Jim (jimed@nospam-appli.com), November 10, 1999.

Running, it is called the Jo Anne Effect.

Took a while to rear its head, only becomes visible when it accumulates enough that the codeheads can't cover it up faster than it snowballs.

-- time lag (but@will.hit), November 10, 1999.

Well, there are lots of excuses are out there all right, but not in this case. The president of the company is one of my best friends, and I know first hand that he is running into cash-flow problems you wouldn't believe. Maybe its just billing fluke, but on the other hand it could be Y2K related and the first signs of the unraveling of governmental billing systems. We'll see.

-- Running (short@of cash.com), November 10, 1999.

The term 'critical mass' comes to mind.

-- Sam (Gunmkr52@aol.com), November 10, 1999.