Advocate has successfully recovered payment of £840 worth of invoices from a debtor who racked up the bill two years ago. Both the debtor and client are sole traders in the West of England, struggling in their own right because they cannot pass on the full cost of inflation to their customers. Our client is one of the last few truly independent tyre shops and servicing centres for light goods vehicles. In 2020, they branched out into supplying workshop consumables. One such customer was a friend specialising in bespoke steel fabrication. Prior to supplying the friend/debtor with argon gas for TIG welding, our client had provided servicing and repairs for both vans.
Misrepresentation
After 15 months of chasing and the vans now being serviced elsewhere, our client decided enough was enough, and it was time for debt recovery. Upon instruction to Advocate, the client also included the debtor’s trade application form. The form stated that the debtor was a limited company registered 600 miles away but contained the correct trading name and contact details. This deception had not been picked up by the client, who, by chance, had only invoiced against the trading name. This enabled Advocate to pursue the debtor as a sole trader instead of asking the client to credit and rebill to a different entity.
Broken Trust
Having been evasive at first, we managed to get a response from the debtor and open dialogue. His opening gambit was to claim the debt belonged to someone else before backtracking and claiming the supply was a gift because he and the client had been friends. Swiftly conceding the point, the debtor next claimed the invoices had only just been raised, to which we provided examples of the client chasing for payment for the last 15 months. In all the back and forth, the debtor was only truthful about one thing: that a friendship used to exist. Both sides agreed the debt had done irreparable damage.
Fixing Payment
With nowhere else to go, an admission followed that cash flow was tight because of the insolvencies of two big customers. Facing the threat of a CCJ impacting their impending remortgage, the debtor proposed a payment plan to clear the debt over two instalments. Showing more humility than they received from the debtor over the last 15 months, our client agreed, and full payment, inclusive of the statutory late payment charges, was received over two weeks. This was another successful case by Advocate Commercial Debt Recovery.