Getting the Fee Paid

I got sent this email the other day:  "I have a friend who works as a recruiter who has a client that owes her a substantial fee but is not coughing up. Can you point her in the right direction for legal advice please"

I thought it might be useful to share my response here:

"... This comes up quite a lot on the forum.  The general advice seems to be to issue a '7 day letter' which basically warns legal action if the invoice has not been paid in 7 days (this has worked for me on the two occasions we have had to do it).  Then you get a solicitor (a lot seem to be "online") to follow up.

There are a number of resources on the web about this.  Here are two (which I picked at random) http://www.debtcontrollimited.com/Debtcontrol/letter.html and http://www.bishopslaw.co.uk/site/commercial/debtrecovery/.

There is also a fair bit of advice here: http://ukrecruiter.willco.com/forum/Forum/read.php?f=&i=70101&t=67542

Hope that helps?"

If anyone has anything else to contribute please leave it as a comment here

Comments

[Lol]

Hi, We had this problem, send a 7 day letter requesting payment resolution in an amicable way, then follow up with a Statutory Demand issued by your local county court (forms can be downloaded), Cost is about £140 which is added to the debt. They then have a period to respond and you can either get a hearing or they can settle before hand. You are in affect starting the process for getting their business wound up.
A lot cheaper than solicitors, more effective than a meaningless CCJ and it does work ! Good luck