Small debts- “but it’s the principal”. Being owed less than $500 sucks. It really does. It is annoying and frustrating and you kind of feel ridiculous chasing someone for two hundred bucks when your time could be better spent finding new customers and new work. It is no wonder thousands of small invoices get written off each financial year. Unfortunately though, if you don’t chase them, this can happen. Earlier this year we had a removalist call us wanting help collecting a handful of individual debts of $99 each. They had this special going about 6 months earlier, $99 for a truck and 1 hours time provided you weren’t moving more than 10 kms away. If you have moved house recently you will know this is a bargain and they were inundated. Sadly for them though, so desperate were they for new customers, they waived their normal trading terms and allowed everyone 7 days to pay. Most did the right thing and paid on time, however several didn’t and only after googling them did I find out why. Someone had posted on Facebook- “moving house? use ************ they only charge $99 bucks and don’t even care if you pay or not”. It turns out they didn’t care- they would send reminders and make a token call, but if the customer still wouldn’t pay, they would write it off as a bad debt. So I showed them this post and to say they were humiliated would be an understatement- not only were they not getting paid, they now had a reputation as a company that worked for free. Having seen the error in their ways, I explained why exactly pursuing every invoice, regardless of the value, was so vital. The moral of this story is- the amount you are owed is irrelevant- the fact you are is all that matters- don’t ever let anyone treat you like a bank, or a charity, or that “little business that don’t really care if you pay or not”. Foot down, period. Cheers
How to collect small amounts