Advocate recovered payment of £10K in just two days after more than two months of our client’s fruitless chasing. The client is a subsidiary of a much larger company that began trading 30 years ago. Based in Essex, they design/install professional HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) and electrical systems. Their customers include national restaurant chains and bespoke home builders. The debtor and our target subject primarily provide architectural design and planning services for exclusive residential developments. Our client had been contracted to do HVAC works on a building owned by the debtor. With practical completion achieved and the defect notification period (30 days) expired, the £10K retention was invoiced.
The debtor communicated, albeit without much substance, as the invoice approached six weeks overdue. Our client works with a number of architects, and based on that previous experience, we typically expect payment around week 8. When emails started being ignored, and phone calls went straight to voicemail in week 7, the client gave a deadline for payment and warned of third-party intervention. Naturally, the debtor would later deny they had been avoiding our client. As the sole debt recovery partner to this particular client for over four years, Advocate Commercial Debt Recovery was instructed minutes after the high noon deadline expired.
Tactical Dispute Resolution
Upon instruction of a third party, it is not uncommon for the debtor to raise a tactical dispute. It is tactical because there is no legal basis behind it, and it serves only as an attempt to justify recent behaviour with a view to delaying payment further. With decades of commercial experience behind them, our client has a default contract clause mandating disputes be raised within seven days of tax point. The invoices also carry this narrative. The HVAC works were completed three months ago, and the defect period expired two months ago. A dispute raised now to justify late payment would be highly suspect. The time frame for raising disputes varies between industries and requires a degree of common sense to be applied. It is quicker to check a shipment of 5 apples than it is to reconcile a courier charges invoice involving 500 addresses. But we digress!
On receipt of communication from Advocate Commercial Debt Recovery, the debtor raised a dispute about wanting to make sure the labour charges (detailed as deducted on the invoice) had been deducted. Confirmation of the invoice content was swiftly provided. On day 2 of Advocate’s instruction, the debtor turned to avoid the statutory late payment charges and recovery costs. The high noon deadline email was forwarded to Advocate by the debtor, claiming they hadn’t been aware of it! With a polite rebuttal in hand, the payment was made. We instruct debtors to make payments to Advocate’s account to save the client the additional nuisance of forwarding our fees. Having already waited two months, our client was inconvenienced further when the full £10K and Advocate’s fees arrived directly into their bank account on day 2 of our action. Accounting protocol requires the Advocate to invoice the client for the fees received. In a period of 6 hours, the client raised a purchase order, approved the invoice and forward payment to Advocate before the file was closed. Arranging payment of our fees so quickly for a company of that magnitude underlines the corporate efficiency and excellence our clients pride themselves on. This was another successful debt collection for the client and Advocate.