Funnily enough I've been chasing a company over the last month for my fencing guy.

3 days work carried out, sent invoice, together with all details because although he'd worked for them before it was under a different entity.  Payment never went in, so I emailed again and oh, we don't know his details and we need to go up and measure the work. (contract was for 3 days work, no mention of quantity involved) Received the payment on the next Friday for 2/3rd the amount.  Thinking the accounts had made a mistake I emailed them. They said manager had instructed them to pay 2 days not 3 and that I should take it up with him.  Emailed him twice, no response, phoned him and oh, I've been on holiday (yeah right) but said only x amount had been done and it didn't warrant 3 days work.  Double checked with my fencing guy and manager was told not to expect much as he was having to dig into concrete to erect the fencing.  Emailed again with convo and if they didn't pay up within 7 days there would be a £40 late payment charge and court action to follow. Got paid a few days later.  What annoyed me most was there was no communication saying we don't agree with your invoice because of x which would have been the right way to go about it.

 

Good Afternoon,

I love credit control, seriously I do.

I have a number of clients which I carry out credit control duties for, often from their site. I see it as a challenge and have become hardened to their excuses over the years. Joanne`s list is typical, and have heard a few of them so many times, its laughable.

But I feel building up a good relationship with my clients customers works wonders, persistence also works and they often put you to the top of the request pile. I would like to think because they feel for you having to chase, but really it is just to simply get you off the phone !!! whatever works is find with me, although I have come across some downright awkward ones in my time.

I tend to use the old fashioned method of telephone / letters, very rarely would I use email as I have found they get overlooked often on purpose. You cannot go wrong with an actual paper statement/letter.

See it as a game, who is going to break first and cough up !.

Julie

I don't do credit control, but I do sometimes communicate with clients' customers.

Last week, or the week before, I spoke to one who said they'd been hit by the latest ransomware outbreak (dubbed NotPetya) - all their systems were affected, so they were in a mess and unable to access their records and therefore pay anything. No idea what the outcome of that was, because I passed it over to the director (who normally deals with credit control) at that client.

At the same client, there's been an ongoing struggle to get payment out of one customer for one specific invoice - IIRC it dates back over a year. The client does a regular (weekly) job for them, and sometimes additional jobs, and invoices at the end of each calendar month. You can therefore see that there are often two regular invoice amounts, depending on whether the job has been done four or five times in the month, and whether or not there have been any others. One of the more regular amounts (IIRC the four week instances) remains unpaid.

Most of the communication to the customer has been through said director. The customer said they paid it on such and such a date - but I've allocated that payment to another invoice for the same amount. After the first couple of rounds of "but that invoice was paid on..." versus "ah, I've allocated that payment against..." (They don't send remittance advices, so all I can go on when I see a payment on the bank is the name and amount.)

I suggested "Just ask the customer for a list of all the invoices they've received from us for that amount. There will probably be one missing." I believe he asked... but never had a reply.

Things go quiet, and then it all starts again.

The latest attempts... a couple of months ago the director asked me to provide a report of all the invoices raised since a certain date, along with the payments we have against them, so that he could send it to the customer. I produced a PDF broken down into two halves: One listed all the invoices, along with details of the payments, and the other half listed all the payments, with the invoices they were allocated against.

Time passed, then I had an email directly from the customer stating that... You guessed it, "We paid the invoice in question on such and such a date" and that "something has been misallocated"

I checked with the director, and then sent an email explaining (again) what that payment was allocated to. I attached the same report again that I produced for the director to send them, and I clarified that, yes, something had been misallocated - but I don't know what because they don't provide any indication of what each payment is for. I pointed out that the easiest solution would be for them to look at the report, specifically at the invoices for that amount, and to verify both when each was paid, and that they are all on their system - and that I suspect one is missing. They need to inform us which one, so we can get a copy to them - it is that invoice, in effect, that is missing unpaid.

(Either that or - what I didn't say in the email - there is another invoice for that amount that they have unpaid, and they're being disingenuous and not mentioning it because we aren't chasing that specific invoice, just that amount.)

That was almost three weeks ago. I've seen no reply.

I predict that in a few weeks time, I'll be hearing "We paid that invoice on such and such a date" relayed to me again. Round and round it goes.

Edit: See my deletion.

-- Edited by VinceH on Monday 10th of July 2017 07:13:24 PM

I've had a similar experience Vince, but from the other side, took me a about 6 months to get a full list of invoices out of a supplier so I could identify which one we'd not received and then pay it. I'm sure they thought I was just being a difficult customer, but the same supplier also had a habit of sending invoices for goods sent elsewhere.

I've had the same problems at Steve - sometimes the bigger companies are just the worst...
It's an ongoing situation (almost 2 years) where I have repeatedly tried to request information from a well known logistics company in order to find out how they are allocating my client's payments to invoices, because nothing ever ties up and they do not issue monthly statements.
I have tried to speak to them on the phone but always get through to someone who seems to barely understand what I'm asking for and then takes weeks to send through the wrong information. I've also tried writing but had no response, or eventually get an extremely lengthy document which is nothing to do with what I asked them for. I can't make it any simpler for them.
I even tried to go down the "just send me a report of absolutely all the account activity and I will try to piece it together myself" route but what they sent through, again for the wrong date range, actually showed different amounts for the invoices than what the physical copy of the invoice showed, and the payments listed were sometimes different to what was sent to them. Again, when this was queried there is either no response or the people on the phone have no idea what I'm asking for.
Just getting absolutely nowhere! Shocking for such a huge company.

Also not quite to do with credit control but a side rant about getting information from people - CIS Statements from contractors are just the bane of my life at the moment!!! Constantly having to phone and ask over and over for them, last week I had someone who said "oh yeah we don't really issue them until someone asks"....... among other gems such as "what is a CIS Statement" and "I never issue them and it's never been a problem".

"I predict that in a few weeks time, I'll be hearing "We paid that invoice on such and such a date" relayed to me again. Round and round it goes."

I said that on 10th July. It's now 21st July - and the cycle has begun again. What I forgot to take into account in my prediction is when I'd be sending out statements, which I did this week.

I've had a reply to the statement, CC'd to the director pointing out that we have been told several times when the invoice I have outstanding has been paid, and asking us to check our records and identify the one that is actually unpaid - but I would need to evolve psychic abilities in order to do that, given that whenever they've made payment, they give us nothing to indicate what they are paying.

However, the director has replied and CC'd me on his reply, and a couple of emails back and forth have revealed:

• The person with whom we communicate isn't actually involved in finance - so they're actually relaying everything we send/say to someone else. That doesn't help...
• And, it turns out, they don't speak directly to those who handle finance either - so they're relaying everything we send/say to someone else who is then relaying it on to the actual finance people.

The director has asked for direct contact details, and has been provided with... a postal address, FFS!

Still, I think that counts as progress.

Oh, as an after thought... this will probably explain everything: The customer is actually a government agency/department/service. So you can probably see why it's such an effective, efficiently run operation.

 

(There doesn't appear to be a facepalm emoticon built into this system - doh is the closest.)

You too proving yet more merriment even if its on the wrong thread!!

LOL Joanne  - although I don't think Shaun will be merging these two threads, they're both quite long now.

Back on the correct thread (I think, as it might be FFS) I got a call on my Doncaster number today, which hasn't been advertised yet and goes straight to voicemail, to say an order I had placed was ready, but they were still waiting for payment from a previous order, so I was on stop!!  I'd never heard of the company and when I rang the mobile number back, I said my bit and he said don't worry, it must have been a wrong number he'd dialed. Only trouble was, I'd phoned him from my mobile and I didn't say who I was!!!

 Edit: Changed credit to thread

 

-- Edited by Leger on Friday 21st of July 2017 09:20:25 PM

VinceH wrote:

---

Well if he said "it must have been a wrong number" it sounds like he's making an assumption based on what you said - so it's entirely possible there's nothing at all suspicious about the call. Ahem.

---

 I did google the guy afterwards and I now know he runs table tennis competitions!!  He's also from the area that his business is but I deleted the voicemail so couldn't remember exactly what it was called, except that it began with the name of the town.

I remember your run in with web windows, I've had junk emails from them myself on an old email address.

VinceH wrote:

And if they're UK-based then in most cases it's off to the ICO with them.

---

 Only real problem I had was stupidly sending off for some marketing guru advice from an internet marketeer called C---- C------.   Got back a thick booklet but then got bombed with email. I unsubscribed, lo and behold, a few months later I got bombarded again, same sh*t.  I unsubscribed again, and yes, a few months later, back came the emails.  I did intend to send a letter charging £25 per email rather than unsubscribe.  Unfortunately a bit of googling told me they were operating out of an accommodation address in London so I figured it would just get ignored anyway.    I never even gave ICO a thought.  

Ive seen a few of these fines mentioned, usually when I do a search to see what number just called me. Have to say I would never ring them back though - seen to many horror stories about phone bills being racked up, plu sthen they know someone might answer next time they call.

That sounds like an awful boss. Anyone approached one of the people who have worked for me over the years in that sort of way and they would have been mopping their splat mark off the walls.

Hides under their desk giggling.... tut.