We are currently doing a debt collection job for our friends at Invicta Power Service and once again using Google has provided us with some invaluable information..!
We took on this job on 25th May 2010. We sent a Statutory Demand for payment to:
- The Registered Office Address
- The Directors Home Address
- and to several email addresses that we picked up from Google.
3 days after we had sent the demand, we received a telephone call from one of the hairdressing salons concerned. She acknowledged receipt of the demand and said that she would get the director to call me.
Needless to say, we never heard back from the director.
On 2nd June, I sent a chase up email to the Director and once again heard nothing back.
On 9th June, Invicta Power Service informed us that they had been contacted by the director and fixed up a meeting to discuss monies owed. At the meeting the debtor agreed to pay, but payment has not been forthcoming at the time of writing
Today 14th July 2010, I contacted the Director on his mobile phone and he "pretended" that he was not the debtor. When I pushed him, he became incredibly abusive F'ing & blinding etc. We thought this was funny and simply laughed at him. Anyway, I got my message across to him - i.e we would issue Winding up Proceedings against him if payment was not forthcoming.
After this telephone call, I informed our friends at Invicta Power Service of my telephone conversation with the debtor and said that it would be unlikely that we would recover the money for them on this occasion. The debtor is a wide boy etc.
After putting the telephone down, I took my own advice and started to do some research on Google. Even I was amazed at what I managed to uncover. It turns out the debtor:
- Received a 4 month suspended jail sentence for a physical assault of a Dr in Ashford, Kent.(incidentally, the Dr concerned was beaten up so badly that he can no longer practice as a Doctor)
- Is a Parish Counselor
- Is on "Linked In" and we happen to have several friends in common..!
The above information is very useful to me in debt collection terms, as, clearly I have established that the debtor has both an on-line & offline reputation to protect and we will obviously use this to our advantage.
Incidentally, our friends at Invicta Power Service paid us £60.00 + VAT to use our statutory demand service. For this service, we will:
- Issue a Statutory Demand for payment to several addresses and by email, fax etc
- Make one follow up phone call to try and secure payment.
In reality, we always do more work for our customers than we actually charge for. In this case, we have
- Issued the Statutory Demand for Payment.
- Sent 3 chase up emails
- Made 5 x phone calls to the debtor &
- Spoken with our friends at Invicta 3 times.
So, you know where to come for cost effective and added value debt collection
Jamieo "Making your cash flow"
I will name the debtor in due course, if we do not recover the debt, so that we can warn everybody in Kent not to do business with this guy/company
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