Random Invoices from Idiot Publishers
Discussion
Back in September my company placed a series of half-page advertisements in a national womens magazine for one of our businesses. We agreed to take three months at a discounted rate, running in the October November and December issue.
However, the publishers are the biggest load of incompetents I’ve ever had the misfortune to deal with. First of all their invoices are directed through an expensive factoring service from a major high street bank. I know what this suggests to me, and is further backed up by my second point; they are monumentally useless in dealing with e-mails and phone calls. Like, responding almost three weeks later to something marked “URGENT!”.
We’ve now got an account with this factoring service (which I didn’t ask for or agree to), into which the publishers feed their invoices through a web interface, and then the factoring service sends us a monthly statements/demands etc.
I think the publishers operate this service with some kind of head-wand, as out of the three legitimate invoices we’ve received from them, we’ve had another three random invoices assigned to us. For not inconsiderable sums (thousands, not hundreds). Needless to say I’ve not paid them, and have to keep querying them with the factoring service, spending time and phone calls to do it. It was annoying. Especially when we get “Pay Up! Or we’ll send Big Ron round” letters for debts which have nothing to do with us.
Now that we’ve finished our ad run, and settled our invoices in full, it’s *really* annoying to find we’re still getting statements with random invoices on them. Today it’s another two totalling £1,527. Understandably, the factoring service don’t care, they’re just billing me for whatever the publishers have told them to. But I don’t want an account with these people anymore! We’ve finished our business relationship with the publishers and are fully paid up! Go away!!
My question to those in the know is; can I start charging the publishers for my time dealing with this crap? Honestly, it has taken up several hours that I’ve wasted chasing this when I should be doing other billable client work for my business.
So, if the answer is yes, I can, how is the best way of going about it?
Tim.
However, the publishers are the biggest load of incompetents I’ve ever had the misfortune to deal with. First of all their invoices are directed through an expensive factoring service from a major high street bank. I know what this suggests to me, and is further backed up by my second point; they are monumentally useless in dealing with e-mails and phone calls. Like, responding almost three weeks later to something marked “URGENT!”.
We’ve now got an account with this factoring service (which I didn’t ask for or agree to), into which the publishers feed their invoices through a web interface, and then the factoring service sends us a monthly statements/demands etc.
I think the publishers operate this service with some kind of head-wand, as out of the three legitimate invoices we’ve received from them, we’ve had another three random invoices assigned to us. For not inconsiderable sums (thousands, not hundreds). Needless to say I’ve not paid them, and have to keep querying them with the factoring service, spending time and phone calls to do it. It was annoying. Especially when we get “Pay Up! Or we’ll send Big Ron round” letters for debts which have nothing to do with us.
Now that we’ve finished our ad run, and settled our invoices in full, it’s *really* annoying to find we’re still getting statements with random invoices on them. Today it’s another two totalling £1,527. Understandably, the factoring service don’t care, they’re just billing me for whatever the publishers have told them to. But I don’t want an account with these people anymore! We’ve finished our business relationship with the publishers and are fully paid up! Go away!!
My question to those in the know is; can I start charging the publishers for my time dealing with this crap? Honestly, it has taken up several hours that I’ve wasted chasing this when I should be doing other billable client work for my business.
So, if the answer is yes, I can, how is the best way of going about it?
Tim.
I think you need to find out exactly what these bills are for.
For example there may just be an accounts department f***-up, or there may have been a bit of a sales department mess up where they have run your advert for more than you have asked for, for whatever reason.
One way to go about this would be to go to the factoring company and say something like:
Please note that we are fully paid up with XYZ Ltd, and have no intention of using them in the future. These invoices received I am afraid have been sent in error. Please rectify the situation as if any of my staff are forced to administrate these errors further we reserve the right to claim recompense at our companies hourly chargeable rate of £50 per hour.
The other way is to stop the invoices at source.
For example there may just be an accounts department f***-up, or there may have been a bit of a sales department mess up where they have run your advert for more than you have asked for, for whatever reason.
One way to go about this would be to go to the factoring company and say something like:
Please note that we are fully paid up with XYZ Ltd, and have no intention of using them in the future. These invoices received I am afraid have been sent in error. Please rectify the situation as if any of my staff are forced to administrate these errors further we reserve the right to claim recompense at our companies hourly chargeable rate of £50 per hour.
The other way is to stop the invoices at source.
I would suggest to the Factors that as you have paid for all the advertising you ordered, and future invoices are either issued in error or posibly an attempt at fraud, as such you will be asking the Asset Based Finance Association (ABFA)or FSA or whoever to investigate. They won't like that.
A company with cashflow problems can raise a lot of cash very quickly by issuing dodgy invoices and then factoring them. Any factoring company worth their salt will have a debenture on the stock and maybe a directors guarantee in place, but you should be on your guard.
A company with cashflow problems can raise a lot of cash very quickly by issuing dodgy invoices and then factoring them. Any factoring company worth their salt will have a debenture on the stock and maybe a directors guarantee in place, but you should be on your guard.
jamesuk28 said:
...A company with cashflow problems can raise a lot of cash very quickly by issuing dodgy invoices and then factoring them. Any factoring company worth their salt will have a debenture on the stock and maybe a directors guarantee in place, but you should be on your guard.
There seems to be a lot of questions regarding unpaid invoices over the last few days...Perhaps this is annecdotal evidence, or a sign of the times?
I do think this year with a lot of businesses only starting back today, this has been an extraordinarily long 'holiday' period where invoices have not been paid all around.
For example, we are owed at the moment what is probably about 20% of our total annual turnover, although in chasing them today payment for 80% of all that is only days away. If we didn't have pretty large cash reserves for this occurance we would be in the same boat too.
It will be interesting to see if things calm down when everyone has their cashflow back in a few weeks or if this is the start of something bigger.
If thats the case you will have a good chunk of business coming up James!
JustinP1 said:
I think you need to find out exactly what these bills are for.
For example there may just be an accounts department f***-up, or there may have been a bit of a sales department mess up where they have run your advert for more than you have asked for, for whatever reason.
It's a cock-up, they have definately not run our ads anymore. In fact they refunded the last one (which did go through correctly, rather amazingly).For example there may just be an accounts department f***-up, or there may have been a bit of a sales department mess up where they have run your advert for more than you have asked for, for whatever reason.
timskipper said:
JustinP1 said:
I think you need to find out exactly what these bills are for.
For example there may just be an accounts department f***-up, or there may have been a bit of a sales department mess up where they have run your advert for more than you have asked for, for whatever reason.
It's a cock-up, they have definately not run our ads anymore. In fact they refunded the last one (which did go through correctly, rather amazingly).For example there may just be an accounts department f***-up, or there may have been a bit of a sales department mess up where they have run your advert for more than you have asked for, for whatever reason.
Banks seem to be pushing factoring heavily at the moment as well. Does not help that they do seem pretty incompetent. The "help" that they are supposed to give by Credit control for the company never seems to go beyond a few weak chase calls. My other half has some experience of their "service" and wouldn't allow any company she works for to go anywhere near it.
timskipper said:
In that case, there's quite a good business model there in bombarding companies with random invoices for small amounts! Some of them might not notice and pay up, or cost them more to deal with it than to pay. 
I am losing my patience with this lot though.
Ironically, when I saw the title of your thread, I thought that this was exactly what this was about!I am losing my patience with this lot though.
There are a number of 'publishers' out there that go through the Yellow Pages and make up their own 'directory' making a little quarter page ad up for medium sized companies. They then send the 'overdue' invoice to the companies accounts/finance department saying that they will apply further charges if payment is not received very soon.
If they don't pay up immediately of ask questions they fax over a copy of the ad and accounts ask no more questions and assume someone in some department has created the ad and pay up.
Well this lot are without any shadow of a doubt taking the piss now.
I mentioned earlier that I cancelled the last of our ads and received a refund, well that took a lot of hassle in itself as they decided not to action my cancellation e-mail for almost 3 weeks and ended up running the ad that I had cancelled.
Eventually they credited my account with the factoring company for the cost of that run, and that has disappeared from our most recent statement. As far as I'm concerned that has concluded any business relationship we had. We've paid for everything we've had, less the credit for thier cock-up.
Wind forward to today; I've had a conversation with the factoring company this morning, who unsurprisngly won't do anything other than mark it as "in dispute" with the publishers. But my beef is not with them really as they're just doing what you'd expect them to.
So I fired off an e-mail to the head man at the publishers telling them in no uncertain terms that I would consider any further demands for money from them either directly, or indirectly via the factoring company, as an attempt to defraud. Essentially, cancel these random invoices and close my account with you and the factoring company, or else I'll report you to the Jack Bauer AND Chuck Norris.
They were on the phone within 10 mins, trying to make me pay for the cancelled ad again, in return for running a freebie half-page in the feb issue!
It seems clear to me they are strapped for cash and are desperate to get some money in, hence why they are now trying to get me to pay for something they themselves previously cancelled. They also tried to concoct some spurious reason why these random invoices might actually be for me, but then admitted they'd not actually found the invoices on thier system. It's ridiculous.
Sufficed to say I told them where to shove that idea and re-iterated my position. We'll see how this pans out over the next few days.
Tim.
I mentioned earlier that I cancelled the last of our ads and received a refund, well that took a lot of hassle in itself as they decided not to action my cancellation e-mail for almost 3 weeks and ended up running the ad that I had cancelled.
Eventually they credited my account with the factoring company for the cost of that run, and that has disappeared from our most recent statement. As far as I'm concerned that has concluded any business relationship we had. We've paid for everything we've had, less the credit for thier cock-up.
Wind forward to today; I've had a conversation with the factoring company this morning, who unsurprisngly won't do anything other than mark it as "in dispute" with the publishers. But my beef is not with them really as they're just doing what you'd expect them to.
So I fired off an e-mail to the head man at the publishers telling them in no uncertain terms that I would consider any further demands for money from them either directly, or indirectly via the factoring company, as an attempt to defraud. Essentially, cancel these random invoices and close my account with you and the factoring company, or else I'll report you to the Jack Bauer AND Chuck Norris.
They were on the phone within 10 mins, trying to make me pay for the cancelled ad again, in return for running a freebie half-page in the feb issue!
It seems clear to me they are strapped for cash and are desperate to get some money in, hence why they are now trying to get me to pay for something they themselves previously cancelled. They also tried to concoct some spurious reason why these random invoices might actually be for me, but then admitted they'd not actually found the invoices on thier system. It's ridiculous.
Sufficed to say I told them where to shove that idea and re-iterated my position. We'll see how this pans out over the next few days.
Tim.
I absolutely *hate* dealing with factoring companies. We've had written into our standard Terms of Business that we deal with all our suppliers on that they can't assign invoices without our prior written consent. I know it's far from watertight, but it's useful to be able to point it out to factoring companies as it moves it from a first line issue to a legal issue.
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