Hi all,

This is a query for me, regards to a couple of outstanding invoices that have now been paid.

I received an email from Stirling Debt Recovery on behalf of their client Thompson Local for two invoices for £162 each and another invoice for £60. I have contacted Thompson Local direct and have paid £324 to them this morning, and will pay the final £60 for end of contract fee next Friday.

Thompson Local stated at first that I needed to contact Stirling DC, I said absolutely not, I don't do any correspondence with a DCA whatsoever, and asked if Thompson Local were refusing to take payment that was owed to them. Of course they said no, but needed to contact Stirling as to what to do.

I get a phone call a couple minutes later back from Thompson, they are quite happy to take £324 today and £60 next Friday, but have said additional charges by Stirling will need to be paid directly to them.

These charges are listed as reasonable debt collection cost under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act 1998, of 10% of the total outstanding debt, plus late fees of £40.

Now I know the general instructions about DCA's is to just ignore them, especially when they don't actually own the debt themselves, as in this case, but as it is a commercial debt, can they still chase me for these additional charges ?

Any advice would be gratefully received.

Cheers,

Bloke199

Nope totally powerless

It's not that simple dx100uk.

There is a Late Payment of Commercial Debts regulation in place.

The !0% appears to have disappeared following a couple of amendments since 1998.

However the £40 is due-but payable to the creditor.

It is up to them whether they pass that money on to their recovery agents.

They are also allowed to add interest at around 8.5 % of the debt for the number of days that the debt was unpaid.

This should also be sent to the creditor.

The date of the start of the late payment interest may be dependent on the length of time that the creditor allowed before payment was due.

In addition, the creditor can also charge for reasonable costs which would include debt recovery costs.

So while not paying Stirling, it would seem that Thompson do have a legal claim against the OP.

A lot may depend on the contract between the OP and Thompson and how late the payments were.

no this is Scotland and Stirling Debt Recovery are a dca

Thanks guys for the response so far.

I'm a little confused as to whether the Late Payments of Commercial Debts Act covers England, as that is where I live, or whether Stirling DC do have any powers to make charges under the Commercial Debts Act.

If either of you could confirm which is which, that would be great.

Many thanks again for your contributions to this thread.

Cheers,

Bloke199

well I assumed this was Scottish as that is where Stirling Debt Recovery are based

I would of thought it would be a English commercial DCA

https://www.b2bmarketing.net/en-gb/resources/news/direct-marketing-news-corporate-media-partners-buys-thomson-local-out-administration

Thanks for the quick response DX.

Stirling DC appear to be an International DCA, specializing in business debt recovery, from the UK and overseas, with contact numbers for the US, UK and Poland, and with a registered office in Krakow, Poland (this is according to their website).

If I read lookingforinfo's reply correctly, instead of paying the DCA the so could service fees of £40, plus interest, I should pay Thompson Local that amount instead, who in turn, then pay the DCA for their work.

If that is the case, when I make the final payment on Friday of £60, could I say that this is the full and final payment for the account and that it will be closed, and that no more monies is due, as Thompson Local believe I should be paying the charges to Stirling DC direct, and not to them.

Any advice will be gratefully received

Cheers,

Bloke199

yep simply avoid the dca

Make sure to get confirmation of it BEFORE you pay it.

The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 has two purposes. Firstly, to compensate creditors for the late payment of debts. Secondly, to deter late payment. It only applies to the commercial supply of goods and services where you don't have a provision for interest in your Terms of Business.

For invoices that are not paid on time, it enables creditors to claim interest, compensation and (for orders placed after 16 March 2013) their reasonable costs of collecting the debt where these exceed the compensation.

Interest can be claimed at 8% over the Bank of England base rate together with compensation at the rate of £40 - £100 per invoice.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/360834/bis-14-1116-a-users-guide-to-the-recast-late-payment-directive.pdf

You can safely ignore Stirling-a dead amoeba has more power. I expect that Thompson may start to become a pain since Stirling will probably look to Thompson for payment.

If they do you could try and get them to change your ad for you if you opted for their generic one. They are designed so that all the ads on the page should get an equal number of calls when what the advertiser wants is to get all the calls of people who visit that page. If that happened that one advertiser would definitely sign up next time but none of the others would which is not what the sales rep or Thompson want.

You could also try and get them to place your ad on the best part of the page.

Take a look at "How to Create Effective Yellow Pages Ads " on businessknowhow.com. The mechanics on Thompson are the same as Yellow Pages and if you can get some changes they can really give you a much better return than using one of Thompson's own ads. { A couple of ex colleagues of mine used to work for YP years ago and the guy in the above article says pretty much how they explained it to me.}

For example if you could get your much more personalised ad on a page where all the others are Thompsons own ads you could clean up.