No pay, no way

[Food Lady]

I didn't deal directly with this one; a customer service agent did but I'm the one who closed the account. It was over 1,000 days past due when I got it. We had been trying to contact them since maybe April in regard to cleaning up the balance. I sent a demand letter and locked their equipment and I notified their salesperson, too, as we do. Nothing happened and the usual next step is to close the account and send to third party collections. I decided this wasn't worth their time; the amount of months contracted for are paid but they hadn't paid the month-to-month portion. We can refer for that but I have the clearance to decide not to and I didn't. So essentially they got a freebee because neither I nor an outside agency will be requiring payment. They tried to use the equipment today and called in wanting a manager. I had to explain to the agent handling the call that basically the customer has no right to complain because I did them a favor. Nothing will be reported to the credit agencies this way. They ignored us for months on end and now they want to complain that their contract is terminated? They can even get a new one because they're still considered in good standing with us. How do you not pay for a couple of years and expect not to be cut off? We should have done that long ago.

[greyblade23]

Yeah, an account that's 2 3/4 years old is probably not going to get paid out on. Even assuming the company was trying to pay, most companies that I know of won't pay on accounts that are beyond their fiscal year. I ran into that when I was the GM at a hotel in Amarillo. This place was a MESS! The regional manager and I met to go over our receivables and wound up writing off something in the close order of $33,000 as unrecoverable. Owner didn't so much as blink. Last I heard, he went through 4 more GMs after I left and then brand corporate pulled his flag.

[Food Lady]

Our government clients often can't pay anything further than a year back so we end up writing off stuff. The accounts I get usually will pay unless they're out of business. This lady was willing to pay what we asked but it never posted and I kept trying to reach her to tell her I needed proof of payment. I got tired of waiting.

[EricKei]

It was a general rule of thumb back at the accounting firm that 30% of all invoices we send out for services we rendered will simply never get paid. x.x Apparently, this is normal, anticipated, and accounted for in the rates we charged.