Knowing what to place and what not to place can be tricky, especially for nervous business-owners looking to get their money back. It is typical in the collections industry for existing, potential, and even new clients to call in around the months of April and May with lists of bad debt and other write-offs made in the past couple months. Unfortunately, some claims placed within collection agencies are nearly impossible to liquidate. If you’re looking to place claims for collection but are unsure of what to place, this blog should give you some insight as to what is and is not likely to be collected.
Oftentimes businesses will place bankruptcy claims, but it is nearly impossible to collect on these. Though it makes sense from the business side why you would want to place this type of write-off, from a collection agency / law firm perspective there is little to be done when a debtor has no assets. There’s no way to collect money that just isn’t there. As an agency and law firm, we don’t want to provide false hope to our clients when we likely won’t be able to collect payment from their debtors.
On the other hand, disputes and avoidance accounts are two types of claims we want you to send to us. Disputes are most commonly associated with service-industry related industries such as plumbing and others where someone is hired to fix a problem. Typically, these are a low-worry type of claim, as it’s typically just a way for debtors to avoid paying for the service. If they’re bankrupt, that’s a difference case, but if it’s simply just a dispute, send the write-off our way. Avoidance accounts are what we call accounts whose main point of contact stops answering the phone, and when they do, dodges the question and promises prompt payment but doesn’t deliver. In this case, the debtor likely has financial trouble, and it is up to us as collectors to get to the bottom of it and collect payment as quickly as possible.
More serious worry comes from no-answer accounts, when a debtor simply refuses to communicate or is instead “running around” the problem–giving you a new excuse every time you communicate with them as to why they haven’t paid or requesting more time without explanation. If you’re out of in-house options for collection, let us take a stab at helping to fix the problem. Take the pressure off your company and let us find your debtor’s assets.
Even if you’ve had another agency take a look at your write-offs or done it yourself in-house, send them to us and let us see if we can collect the rest of the balance. If you have any accounts unpaid that need collected, it’s worth a shot just to file them through our new client portal. The portal replaces our old spreadsheet model to make filing write-offs even easier for our clients. Give us a call today to see what we can do for you.