LukeSnedden.com

Is it too hard to return an email or a phone call?

We are waiting on payment from a agent at the moment. Its painful!

When we first started using them this agent paid on time, every week, but lately they have been getting later and later.

What really pisses me off is their inability to return phone calls or emails. The administrator only works on Wednesdays and Fridays so we correspond be email. However they never respond.

After repeated calls they leave the phone off the hook!

In the past when we have queried latish payments they have put the money in our account straight away. However this time they are over 3 weeks late and they haven’t responded to our requests for updates.

This agent organises our contracts and receives payment from the company we contract too. This is a large multi national who pays on time.

This agent has agreed to pay us four weeks after invoice. One would expect that payment to be received regardless of receipt of payment from the Multinational. But no their excuse is “we haven’t been paid so we can’t pay you” Can I hear a BULLSHIT!

Whats worse is the lack of communication.

Ideally a short email saying that payment is expected on such and such a date would be the least they could do. Actually the least they could do is put their phone back on the hook…

Whenever there are problems that seems to be the reaction take it off the hook, they don’t even allow us the opportunity to leave a message, now that is a polite way to treat your contractors.

Am I worried?

YES!

My past experience in finance companies has taught me that when companies/people alter their payment habits, something is going on with cash-flow, and if you don’t get your money out before they go bust, as an unsecured creditor your chances of getting paid are nil.

The New Zealand Herald reported today that;

“A ’staggering increase’ in the number of firms not paying their bills in the first half of the year has prompted credit bureau Veda Advantage to warn businesses of a deterioration in the next 18 months. Veda said it saw a ‘massive’ 64.56 per cent rise in commercial defaults in the six months to June compared with a year ago. Defaults are essentially where the business owed money has given up and turned to a debt collection company which then informs a credit bureau like Veda.”

This has highlighted to me that it is as important as ever to crack down on the late payers. I have a belief that when it comes to payment you have to be the person/company that the Accounts lady makes sure she pays on time, create trouble, be a hard ass, be unforgiving when it comes to receiving payment.

I go out of my way to be flexible in every other aspect of business, as it is important to participate in give and take to be successful.

But in any business Cash-flow is king and being nice sees you getting pushed to the back of the queue.

We are waiting here in the dark expecting to be paid and yet we hear nothing from the agent, in fact they have not done anything for us since we signed up, we deal directly with the multinational for everything except payment for work completed. All our expenses are filed directly with them by-passing the agent. Which leads me to ponder why do we bother booking work through them?

Why don’t we do it ourselves? By-pass their service or better yet set up as competition?