Collecting Debt in Time
By Glen Hutchinson
How do you make sure you collect debt owed to you in time?
In the bill collection industry , back in time, and still today, if a bill collector wants to sue an account the collector generally has to find assets or “targets” for a potential judgment and they take this information to a legal manager to review. If the account will be sued or not depends upon the information the collector has gathered and how much and how quickly the client will pay legal fees. And the collector sits there, being drilled by the legal manager about information that for the most part is of little or no value. By the time they make the decision to commence litigation a lot of time has passed by, in some cases the company has ceased operations and if a retail collection the debtor has quit their job ( or died of old age?). The constant passage of time.
This is the old time approach. The new approach, or mine anyway, is to sue quickly , at my expense initially and then look for assets after the fact. After the fact being when judgment has been obtained. This is an interesting way to be a bill collector. The only way it can cost the client money is when the account gets paid. Is this really a cost? From the agencies point of view, now there are not only commission monies at stake but also legal costs. Would one not think that a collection agency that has spent their own money to obtain judgment would not have a more vested interest in the collection of the file than an agency that has already made money by charging their client high initial legal fees?
If you have receivable problems, do you have the time?
