If your invoice payment terms are 30 days and you have debtors in your 60 day and older column, you should be looking to instruct a third party (such as ourselves) to collect these debts for you
It makes sense to use your internal resources to focus on collecting debts at the front end of your ledger (in the current, or 30 day column) and utilise our debt collection services to collect the older stuff.
Why? I hear you ask...
Quite simply, the longer a debt remains unpaid, the higher the risk there is of being faced with a bad debt. You need to consider this: Do you want to collect your debt, or face the possibility of another bad debt? Let's face it, if someone doesn't want to pay you they don't have to. The UK legal system doesn't exactly help you to collect your debts does it?
If you issue a County Court Claim, it will normally cost you dear both in financial terms and in time terms.
Example 1
If you get a County Court judgement, you can then send in the bailiffs. Ok, so the bailiffs knock on the door and do not get an answer. They will then simply return the warrant to you stating that they could not gain access. This leaves you with a debt recovery problem. In real terms you are now faced with trying to recover a much larger debt. If you had to resort to legal action to try to recover the original smaller debt, what makes you think you are able to recover the now larger debt? The fact is you won't and ultimately you will be faced with a higher value write off.
Example 2
You issue a County Court Summons, the debtor (defendant) puts in a defence to your claim. The judge considers the defence and decides to list the matter for a full hearing. Firstly, you will have to pay additional fees if the matter is listed for an actual hearing and secondly, you will have to attend court. The outcome of the case very much depends on who presents the more credible case on the day. In other words, if the judge likes you and you present your case in an organised, polite and professional way you will win the case. When you consider, there is a good chance that you may lose the case and therefore run the risk of having to pay the defendants costs, as well as having to potentially write off the debt, Was it a good decision to go to court in the first place?
Don't get me wrong I am not totally against using the county court procedure. In some cases, it makes perfect sense. In the main and in my own experience, use of the county court procedure purely as a debt recovery tool is not the best way of recovering your money.
Before you consider issuing county court proceedings, look at your case through the eyes of a third party. In other words, give your case a "reality check" So many cases fail due to lack of signed paperwork, or failure to provide proof that an order was placed by the debtor. When you look at your case you need to do so from a "Black & White" perspective. If there are a few "Grey" areas, I would suggest that you do not issue a county court claim.
If you want to recover your money, allow us (the experts) to do it for you. Our charges start from as little as £12.50 for our Letter before Action Service. This is a very small price to pay, when you consider that our chances of recovering your debt are far higher than yours.
You only have to look at our testimonials on our website to determine that it isn't only us that thinks we are the greatest debt collection company on earth - our customers do too!
