Courier Business Stuff

I’m sitting here, working into the evening, trying to sort out the absolute cock-up that Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance have made of my account with yet another of their clients. I’ve posted, emailed and faxed our detailed Remittance Advices to them and Anna’s given them the information over the phone, yet they still seem incapable of applying our payments to our suppliers’ invoices. We never used to have this problem with them, in fact until about 3 months ago I would have said they were the most efficient factoring company I’ve come across. Is it just me or is everyone finding these people to be an absolute nightmare at the moment?

Are the companies that use these people aware of what a bad impression they make on their customers and how they actually SLOW DOWN the payment process? They’re all as bad as each other of course, I’m just singling out LTSBCF because of the way they’ve quickly gone from being one of the best to less than mediocre.

You companies that factor obviously don’t understand the damage that these cretins can do to your businesses.

Posted under Courier Financial Issues

Charge more for work that you’re likely to need to sub out. Build up cash reserves to fund future growth or use excess profit to fund borrowings. Operate strict credit control policies from day 1 and enforce them with a strong will even at the expense of losing scumbag, lying customers that you REALLY don’t need.

Yes it’s really NOT rocket science.

Posted under Courier Basics, Courier Financial Issues

Here’s something that the bad payers should consider:

If someone carries out 3 jobs a week for you over a 1 year period, invoices you for each job on a separate invoice and you pay each invoice just a day or two later than the agreed terms, by the end of the year you will owe them at least £6,240 in late payment charges. All they have to do is show, ‘in the balance of probability’, that the invoices were received by you and were paid outside the agreed terms, or later than 30 days from invoice if there were no agreed terms. There is no way of contesting the late payment charges unless you can satisfy a judge that you didn’t receive the invoices.

All the people who’ve been bad payers in the past should also note that the late payment charges are treated like any other debts and can be claimed in court for up to 6 years.

Slightly more worrying (for some) is that if a limited company goes bust the liquidator has a duty to recover as much money as possible for the creditors. So even if your mate at XYZ Ltd would never have dreamt of charging you late payment charges you could still end up with a bill for thousands of pounds from the liquidator if his company went bust.

So pay your bills before they become overdue or at least make sure that you treat all the suppliers you’ve had for the last 6 years so well that they stand to make more from continuing to supply you than they could pottentially make from all those late payment charges.

Posted under Courier Financial Issues, Late Payment, Legal Issues, Uncategorized

Well said Brian & Ali. You can bet your life that these people don’t pay their own, or their employees’, salaries a couple of months late so why should the owner-driver be last in the queue to be paid?

The answer of course is that the late payer (wrongly) believes that the owner-driver has no power and they can bully them with impunity.

I’ve said it a hundred times – if EVERYONE took advantage of the late payment legislation and charged penalty charges to late payers then this behaviour would stop overnight.

Nigle, thanks for being so up front about the failings of the rating system – that’s exactly the point I’ve been making for months. We need an ebay-style rating system so that performance as a ‘courier’ and performance as a ‘payer’ can be separated and we need to be able to look at a member’s CURRENT performance – not just the stars they’ve accumulated through 4 years of membership.

I asked ‘Network’ if, as we’re signatories of the Better Payment Practice Code, we could have their logo added to our directory entry. During the conversation I was a bit surprised to be told by the ‘Network’ staff member that I “shouldn’t be fighting other people’s battles for them”. I pointed out that if OUR valued suppliers are going out of business because of late payment then it’s as much my battle as it is their’s. I thought ‘Network’ were meant to be taking this late payment business seriously now?

Posted under Courier and Freight Exchanges, Late Payment