Up till now I have always been willing to happily take telephonic orders even from people I have never met in person. I know this might sound silly and naive but most of the people who phone me have been referred by a previous customer or a friend so I have never had any problems with non-payment.
On Monday I worked for hours on two chocolate birthday cakes for a new customer, only for her to claim that she only ordered one(!!). Even though I had a friend at my house when the lady phoned to place the order and she heard me confirm all the details for the orders I realised I had no way to prove that she asked for both cakes.
At first I was really upset about it but then I decided to use this experience as a learning curve and in future anyone ordering from me for the first time will have to either sign an order form or send me a confirmation email with all the details on. No more blindly trusting people to keep their word, this is my business and I can’t afford to be nice all the time.
The silver lining was that since it was a double-digit cake, I sent half over to my friend's house and both our families got rich chocolate cake for desert. The kids all loved it and the next morning I got another order for a cake from one of my previous customers, so that made me feel all better again.
