Virtually all businesses have to contend with some amount of “bad debt” owed to them by non-paying customers/clients. As the largest and oldest Schuylkill County law firm, our attorneys represent a wide variety of businesses throughout Pennsylvania, ranging in size from small sole proprietorships to large corporations, and we are frequently asked to represent these businesses to help collect outstanding debts owed to them.
Although each business is different, there are a number of things that most businesses can do to either decrease their amount of the bad debt, or at the very least, increase the likelihood of being able to recover bad debt if collections activity becomes necessary. Each client’s business is looked at on a case-by-case basis, factoring in the nature of the relationship which the business has with the customer, the amounts at issue, the terms of payment, and various other factors.
Most bad debt can fall into one of several categories:
Non-payment due to a dispute – these bills are not being paid either because the customer thinks the bill is too high, the quality of the goods/services provided were inferior, or for some other related “value” reason.
Financial hardship – the customer does not have the money, or is choosing to spend the money on something else that the customer values as being more important.
The “deliberate non-payer” – these are the winners of our society who refuse to pay with the hopes that the business will not pursue the debt, and thus they will obtain the goods or services at no charge. When installment payments are used, one variation of this scheme is for the non-payer to withhold the final payment (or last few payments) hoping that the business will simply write off the debt.
Unlike large debt collection companies that try to “manage” tens of thousands of accounts, using small armies of workers who may have little to no training, our Schuylkill County based attorneys can review many businesses account receivable files, and manage them on a case-by-case basis, adapting strategies that appear to be most likely to succeed. For instance, a polite, nicely worded letter offering an installment plan would probably be useless at obtaining a recovery of funds from a deliberate non-payer, but may entice a person with limited financial means to set up an affordable payment plan to begin reducing the amount owed.