What to Look For in a Local Government Debt Collection Agency

07/14/2017

As a business, you will have or already have unpaid invoices, whether they were for a service or a product. Recovering amounts owed can be a long and bumpy road for your business, unless you hire a collection agency to handle everything for you, including keeping you legal. So what should you look for in a collection agency? Here are some details.

Avoid Headaches and Wasted Valuable Time

Hiring a second local government debt collection agency is perhaps the best decision you can make when it comes to collecting on old debts. You have other important business tasks to handle and doing the collecting yourself can consume a lot of your important time, and it's not rational to continue using your primary debt collection agency to continue to chase old debts they haven't collected previously.

One Size Fits All Does Not Apply

Every debt collection agency is different and some may have the offered services you need while others may not be tailored to your situation. Many go straight to legal action without contacting the debtor personally. Some, such as Outstanding Collections Australia use personal contact extensively, and find that personal contact from a debt collection agency increases collection rates dramatically and incurs few if any legal fees. Local government debt collection agencies that rely exclusively on legal action do a disservice to ratepayers and to councils. Ratepayers who are struggling to pay rates bills will doubly struggle to pay expensive legal fees in addition to the rates - this results in a double negative for councils, loss of goodwill from ratepayers who believe council doesn't care, plus an increase in Rates Outstanding levels for council as overdue rates accounts drag on much longer.

Types of Debt They Handle

Debt collectors focus on specific types of council debts, which means that you may need a couple of suppliers to get best results on your whole profile of bad debts. For instance, some focus solely on straightforward accounts, rushing through legal action and hoping for payment. Others specialise in collecting through personal contact and collecting difficult debts, skip tracing long lost debtors etc.

Their Client Database

An important thing to consider when looking at hiring a debt collector is the type of clients they retain. Some collection agencies work with big corporations while others handle small business clients. Some handle both or are better with one or the other. Some work with franchises while others work with companies that provide services like home improvement companies and landscaping businesses.

Choosing a company with an extensive client base in local government, with diverse experience in city and country councils can be very helpful.