Often times businesses might delay their call to a professional debt collector for fear of upsetting or losing the relationship with their customer. However, generally speaking the sooner you call in the professionals the better the outcomes. As debts get older and older, we generally find that it gets harder and harder to collect, so our advice is – don’t delay, get in early!
As a first step, consistent management of your debtor’s ledger will ensure that you are aware of any issues earlier rather than later. The next step is to critically look at the status of your aged debts to try adding objectivity to each case. Here’s a checklist of tell tail signs that its time to call in the professionals:
- You can’t contact your customer any longer
- Your customer refuses to pay and negotiations have fallen over
- Your customer has told you they cannot afford to pay
- Your customer has broken payment arrangements
One of the experiences of running a business is having customers or clients who are incapable or unwilling to settle their debts on time. Whilst some plan to pay eventually, some debtors have just made up their minds not to honour the transaction agreement by delaying payment for what ever reason. You may agree that chasing customers to pay their bills, and at the same time focusing on your business, can be a big and distracting job. That is where the Debt Collection Agency can ease the pain. No business is too small or big to need a debt recovery service, and here is why your business may need it.
- High Chances of Debt Recovery
The primary business of a debt collection agency is to help retrieve your payment from customers. As such, you can expect them to be experts in this sense. They know the intricacies of making even an unwilling client pay, and are well placed to be able to get your debtors to pay. So, if you have delinquent debts you are sceptical of being able to recover, a debt collector may be of immense help.
- Legal Protection
Consumers and customers do have rights, even when they owe money. Being a business owner you may be unaware of some of these rights. In the course of trying to retrieve your debts by yourself, you may inadvertently step on the rights of your debtors leading to legal consequences. A debt collection agency has experience in navigating this web because they know where the rights of your debtors start and ends.
- Adequate Documentation
There are instances where some debt cases end up in court before they can be claimed. In this case, if a collection agency has been involved in negotiations with your debtors, they will have a proper record of what transpired at each time they tried to reach them. The court can therefore, see how much effort you have put in to getting your customer to pay, and this may help if you immensely.
- Fast Debt Settlement
From experience, as soon as a debtor discovers that a debt collection agency is involved, they tend to look for means to settle their payments. The result of this quick debt resolution is that you get the money your business needs to keep operating and can concentrate more on achieving your goal.
- Flexible Payment Plan
One thing that may be running through your mind as you consider hiring a debt collection agency are the charges involved. At TCS we charge a small nominal fee for the debt lodgement and then a commission, scaled depending on debt size and recovery time frame. This means that you only pay commission if the debt is collected, ie no collection, no commission.
- Enhanced Business Image
Using a debt collection agency can offer you a degree of distance from a potentially difficult situation. Its never easy asking for money, especially when its getting to be an older debt and you’ve tried several times. An agency can offer you a third party that can take some of the potential emotional angst out of the negotiations, preserving your relationships.
- Local Know How
Using a collection agency that has held a strong on going presence in the market you are active in ensures that you are dealing with an agency that will have local knowledge, and a large database of locals. This means that often the person you are chasing for money has been dealt with before by the agency and may even be more comfortable speaking with someone they have debt with before for matters like this. Its hard to beat local knowledge and experience! TCS has been in operation in Tasmania since 1875 – that alot of experience!
On a Final Note
Why stress yourself on recovering a debt when you have an agency who can get it done for you? A collection agency can help you retrieve your money from your debtors and manage the situation professionally.
The information provided here is general in nature. As always, we recommend any business seek independent professional legal and financial advice, as every case is different.
With over 140 years’ experience in debt collection and credit management in the Tasmanian marketplace, we have the right people, tools, and knowledge to make a difference to your bottom line. Get your debts under control quickly and easily by engaging our services.