Sheet...tell me about it. It cost me 21 bucks today to send out 3 stinking certified letters....7+ bucks each!! Cut one lady loose 2 weeks ago, shut her panel completely down (explained in cert. letter) and never a peep from her...and she lives in a 2 million dollar house and has 2 Mercedes...yada yada. Cutting another guy loose in two days for non-payment (5+ months) AND he switched to VoIP which I told him 38 times wont work with his panel.
Deadbeats...bye bye.
I KNOOOOOOOW watcha mean.!!!!!!!!!
About 5 / 6 years ago, I looked at all my accounts and determined what area I wanted to cover for service. There are some places around here that are within 20 miles but take two hours to get to and two hours to get back. I just can't charge them what it costs me to do a service charge. So, rather than continuing talking to myself as I'm sitting in traffic doing a losing service call, I set them free. About 20 accounts fell outside the ring. I called them and told them I'd be switching their accounts over to someone in there area. I simply gave the accounts to someone who lives in their areas. Then, I looked at all the laggards in paying. All those who a few times a year I had to call and negotiate whether they were going to pay me or not and/or set up a monthly payment plan, or who were continuously 3 or more months behind or those that I'd get a "you'll have to speak to my husband" who would tell me his wife pays the bills or ...... what ever their habitual problem was and I just dumped them. I sent them a certified ret receipt letter, that as of ___ days, monitoring service would be terminated. That was about 40 or so, accounts. Never got ONE call asking why. Which sorta says something, all in it self.
Now, as I go through the billing, if there's an occasional client that is late. I write a little note in red on the bill, to try and catch up with payments and .... it's done. Even with the number of accounts that I have, Accounts Rec is running smooth as silk. What a relief. No more aggravation, telephone calls, threatning letters of cancelation. Anyone who starts a bad habit gets a certified letter stating that they are habitually falling behind in payments. If it continues, they will be charged an increase in their monthly rates to cover the cost of additional billing and if it is not paid, their monitoring service will be dropped. On those, I've gotten a few irate calls about that one, but after they vent, the payments have been on time. No one cancelled. That sorta says something too.
Getting to old have to worry about whether someone is going to pay their freakin bill or not. Jeeeeze. Grow up and take responsibility for your life already! I'm not your mother.