I see many opinions here, but I think the one that stands out most is the concept of customer service. If you treat your customer right, even if that means eventually losing them, you will come out ahead in the future. Word of mouth is a strong marketing tactic, but can also bite you if you don't act properly. For instance, let's assume that you take what I consider the selfish route and decide to only do what the contract states and no more. Your customer will notice and in the future may not use you, but worse they may provide a negative comment to other potential customers. If instead you remain professional, courteous, and service oriented to what's best for your client, they'll be your best marketing department. Remember, companies are made up of people. What happens when a manager or exec from your current company leaves for a new company? The way you treat them will affect their thoughts and decisions about bringing you to a new client with them. As professional engineers and developers, we should always take the high road and act with the best interests of our customers/clients even when it seems as if we're being screwed. It will help you in the future and also keep you from getting ulcers :-).

pets died. Granted that they're not people, but a life is a life. The pets (and even children) would have no choice in the matter as to whether their owner/parent paid the fees. I agree that everyone should pay their dues. Having a welfare state is not good. However, I also believe that we as humans and neighbors should be willing to help out in dire situations such as this. I think the damage caused by the fire to this point and then to the house, far outweighed a $75 bill. Also, we really don't have all the info around what that bill was do we? Was it specifically for fire related services? or was it a parking ticket? Are we really going to let someone's house burn over an unpaid parking ticket in the future?

Agreed. I read several of the docs and I don't see where they're advocating what is in the summary. Why try to propagate fear?

ISBN: 9780805358353 Pascal : Programming with Style, A Brief Introduction Lamb, Richard Although written with Pascal it's good info for any programming language.