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That seems almost worth it yeah.
Debt collectors usually work on either a percentage of the debt (and it's high - like 50%) or a fixed fee.
No one is going to work to collect a 2EUR debt.
For 50EUR (if they're keeping half), I suspect they'll be willing to send an email or make a phone call, but I don't think you're going to find someone who's going to give you Inigo Montoya levels of dedication for such small amounts. How much money do you think there is for them...they get 25EUR, pay someone to work the case, overhead, profit, etc.
I don't know what's required to be able to report to credit bureaus - i.e., to put a mark on someone's credit that says "they owe me money and didn't pay". That may give you some leverage in some countries.
It would be better to optimize your model so that clients can't build up debt in the first place. Or at least keep it low enough so it will never hurt your business or your peace of mind. I have no clue how big or how small your business is.
Then of course you can ask yourself if you're spending your time and energy very efficient. Maybe getting new customers is easier than chasing lost customers to pay that last bill. Or try to keep the lost customers by offering 50% off their bill if they pay within 48 hours. One time only of course.
There are limitless solutions to this that don't require you to be negative.
Lads, I'm not trying to be negative nor adjust our business ... asked because thought that some of the providers (or users) here can suggest good debt collection company.
Thanks anyway
/close
I guess you could check out http://www.intrum.com/ for the Netherlands (and possibly rest of Europe too, based off their website). Not sure about their business model, I thought it was no cure no pay in our case, plus they earn money by adding a hefty fee for the debtor to pay.
As far as I know they can also be quite aggressive in their approach to debtors. Not sure if you're looking for that, but I personally think that's somewhat a good thing for debt collectors.
EDIT: You could also look into selling the debt, for a portion of the amount. Intrum also offers this (See Debt Purchase), and I'm sure other parties do too. I have no experience with this though.
At least in the US, you can't just add fees you make up. If this company is going to charge 100EUR or whatever to collect and expects the debtor to pay that, then that fee would have to be spelled out in the contract/TOS the debtor accepts. In the case of everyone who owes the OP money as of today, he's out of luck.
it depends on the state
if the person is in texas, yes, they aren't worth a dime. some other states arent so lenient on what i guess is revolving debt default (credit card?)
i was actually aiming my comment at the European union. and towards the UK/Ireland.
UK and Ireland are part of the European Union.
why did you even bother to mark a stupid smartass comment. Read what i previously said.
I SAID TOWARDS. meaning those 2 countries debt collection laws are almost identical. Consumers have alot of rights.
Anything less than $500 is not worth it to a collection agent to go after so it would be very difficult to find a company to even work with you on collecting 2 euros. Might be best just to cut your losses and write them off come tax time.
I just checked and in The Netherlands the collection fees are set by law, usually a percentage based upon the invoice sum, but with a minimum of EUR 40. Thus an invoice of EUR 2 could easily become EUR 42. There are some pre-requirements though, such as sending a reminder mentioning these fees. But a debt collector can do this for you as well.
You can also charge interest over the sum that's overdue.
So, as you can see, pursuing open invoices can very well be lucrative.
OK, good that I said "at least in the US" - apparently it's different elsewhere.
Again, in the US, this would have to be spelled out in the contract (and is commonly done). If the other party didn't agree to it, you can't just decide to add interest.
@gbshouse offering a "free" service that lets people without a payment method on the account or account credits roll-over into "paid" territory and then sending collections after non-payers is just about the slimiest thing I've seen on LET yet
Just cut people off after their 250k free queries, for fuck's sake
I don't quite understand why everyone's straight up attacking the OP for asking a fairly reasonable question. He's asking about 15-20 specific accounts which each have about 50 EUR of overdue balance according to his posts, which is much more than the 2EUR that many people are mis-quoting (by simply being too lazy to read the actual thread.)
I do agree however that your entire flow needs to be rewritten to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, unless you want to specifically turn into a company like FortaTrust that makes their money out of defamation (which hey, business is business, I'm not here to preach morals about that kind of thing.)
His business is intentionally structured to allow this to happen, someone can actually set up a free account with some domains, forget about it, and easily rack up tons of euros in charges.
OP has been told that his business model is broken many, many times on this forum, yet he refuses to change it - his business model is built on this kind of extortion.
This is a bad solution to fixing a worse billing model - and nothing about it is honest.
Sure, but nothing about many industries is honest. Just look around at the rest of the LowEnd market, with hosts such as BlueVM; FileMEDIA; GreenValueHost; and many others allowed to do whatever they please, and buyers' still dumb enough to purchase it.
We've told him it's a bad idea, if he doesn't listen; that's fine, it's up to him to decide to put those changes into action, if he really wants to see a lot of change in the revenue conversion of his service.
This is one of the main reasons why I won't do any free services with paid extras, there's no easy means to collect the "paid extras" without either having a flow that requires an account upgrade, or taking payment information from the get go.
I think we've found who the next shovenose is.
How so? You effectively signed up for a trial offer, one that states that you will be charged for usage after 250k queries.
Your inability to read the fine print on a trial offer (There always is one, see AWS for example -- same thing.) or misconceptions about what will get you billed is none of the provider's responsibility.
Why would he cut anyone off at 250k, how would he even stand to make any money from a business perspective then? Nobody offers services for free to be a good samaritan, they do so because they hope to convert people to paying clients -- and offering 250k free as is is pretty decent already.
There's no deceit going on here, people appear to be expecting them to shoulder the burden for their inability to fully comprehend what the hell they actually signed up for and that in no way is rage4's responsibility.
That said, I don't agree with the collection agency approach (But that doesn't mean they're not within their rights to do so, if they really wanted to.), perhaps configuring a smaller grace period might make it easier to write these off as tax expenses.
(i.e: You can't accrue more than 10 EUR in debts from DNS based services in a pre-defined billing period. Service should then be shut-down.)
//2 cents.
Why the hell isn't he cutting them off after the first extra unpaid euro is accrued? AWS at least requires you to have payment methods on-hand so this isn't a problem.
This is very deceitful for a freemium service - if it were a true "trial" only customers with account credit or a history of paying would be allowed to roll over 250k
Sadly in the US you can - dish tv did it to me. They cut off my service about 3 days after I didn't pay a bill ( wasn't using their service anymore ), and then kept racking up my $40/mo to ~$220 and THEN sent it to the collection agency.
On another note - Sprint told me to leave their network because I was using too much data on their 'unlimited' plan. They then told me I had to pay a $300 ETF on the one line that 'didnt use too much data' when I called to cancel after the letter. Now I have over $500 somehow on my credit report from Sprint.
I lost my job and didn't pay verizon for a month, they suspended my services, and continued to charge me for an additional two months.... I now have a large sum of money on my credit report from verizon.
If you have the letter, challenge it. If they don't relinquish, sue under FCRA.
Yeah, see, I don't think anyone should have their credit report hit because @gbshouse is a fucking moron who relies on retroactive billing for free-tier users with no payment method on record or no payment history
Probably because it's a new problem for him, one that he's still deciding how to deal with.
Stop calling people extortionists for no reason, the problem is still with your usage no matter what you try to claim.
The verizon and sprint cases are completely unrelated, they're charging you for things you didn't use (which may or may not be okay) -- rage4 is charging you for queries that you in fact DID use, and are now refusing to pay for because you couldn't be bothered to read the fine print.
Having a card on file and charging would still probably have the same moronic retards crying in forums 'Waaaaaahhhh, I got charged for a free service.'
tl;dr: You can't fix stupid.
Not at all, I thought I mentioned this above but this is farrrrr from the first time he's mentioned this problem, yet he keeps letting it happen (because his scheme depends on it)
Here's one of the last times it was pointed out to @gbshouse how his billing scheme was a bad idea, and guess how much he changed in the months since February (nothing) http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/478445/#Comment_478445
it's also worth noting that you basically have to take your dns provider at their word as far as your usage goes
Even if he does, still doesn't make it extortion.
A simpler analogy to this is probably bandwidth billing, you buy a dedi that says usage after the first TB is charged at $10/T.
You use 3T in a mo, your ISP/host charges you an extra 20. You don't pay this, and the host sends it to collection.
The exact same thing is happening here, except with DNS queries. You can argue why they didn't cap you at 1T and shut down the port -- the simple answer to which is 'because they didn't feel like it.' It'll probably make them some money, and business is business.
So far, not seeing any extortion in the equation. They're charging you something you agreed to when signing up.
how exactly is this analogous to a freemium service?
Because the exact same thing is being done? You paying 'nothing' buys you 250k queries, further is billed.
Not really a hard concept to understand.