I haven’t seen this thread before, but the word ZALE’s & Contract
Jewelers caught my attention.
Here in my town, we cater to 9 stores, we pick up and deliver twice
a week (we do repairs only). Upon deliver, invoice in hand, we
collect for the work.
My attitude is this, as a retailer, do they give out the repairs to
the customer and tell them:" Hey look, take 90 days+ to pay! And
then you can give us excuses as to why you can’t pay us putting you
beyond 90 days…"
My experience here in Canada, we have People’s and we have Mappin’s
Jewellers, both owned by Zale’s. They were the worst at paying, at
one point I had almost 5 months of work done with no pay from these
<>! Would they work 5 months for nothing?
So one day, I gleefully picked up their repairs, and diamond setting
work.
4 days later, on my regular scheduling I would be done and
delivering, but I hadn’t started on their stuff yet. The store
managers start calling looking for their repairs, my solution was
this. Bring me a check or cash for the total amount owing, or I am
holding this stuff until we go to court.
Again, there may be milder ways of handling this situation but the
way I see it, these stores wouldn’t want me holding there customers
stuff and having to explain to almost 200 people why their stuff
isn’t coming back for a long while.
The check arrived in 1 day!
Now it is cash on delivery for these <>.
Hopefully I offended no one, I just calls 'em like I sees 'em 
Gerry