Collections Process

The Process

We begin the collections process by sending the delinquent debtor a law-firm demand letter, and then following up with a phone call if he or she does not call us first.

Our initial objective is to give the debtor an opportunity to take care of the debt voluntarily. If the debtor speaks with us, we make suitable payment arrangements, offering a discounted settlement or payment arrangements if cooperative financial disclosure shows an inability to pay the full debt.

If the debtor fails to communicate with us or refuses to pay voluntarily, we identify an enforcement avenue, obtain client instructions to do so, then sue, obtain and enforce judgment. Judgment is enforced through garnished wages or bank accounts, filing a writ of seizure and sale against the home and other real estate, or forcing the sale of real estate, if requested by our client, using the judicially-supervised sale process we pioneered in Ontario. At any point during the process, we are open to settling the debt for what our client feels is reasonable given the circumstances.  

When the debtor has the ability to pay the debt and simply refuses to do so, we can often recover the full principal and interest owing and much of the costs of collection for our client. We can also ensure that the bad debt is reported on the debtor’s credit record if our client would like to do so.

When an enforcement avenue is not identified, some clients instruct us to sue anyways as our experience shows the recoveries consistently exceed the costs of suing. In these situations, we also use traditional, non-legal collection approaches of regularly contacting the debtors by letter and phone inviting them to resolve the matter.

How Our Process is Different

Our process incorporates the best of what collection agencies and law firms have to offer, and discards what makes them inefficient and ineffective. 

Collection agencies typically don’t sue, so they are unable to utilize the power of the legal system to enforce debt payments. And by relying on scare-tactics and harassment, some agencies damage good will between creditor and debtor. 

At the same time, most law firms work on an hourly basis, and are not strong at identifying and going after enforcement avenues, often resulting in the fees charged being greater than the recoveries.  We have sophisticated skip-trace and asset search capabilities through the services of a top-notch collection agency that provides services to us, Collectrite Ontario (SW86) Inc. Under contract to us on your behalf, Collectrite uses cutting-edge search tools and databases to locate people, identify employment, property ownership, bank accounts and other enforcement avenues necessary to successfully recover the money owing to you. Where deeper digging is required, we engage private investigators to get the necessary information.  

Our process incorporates the contingency-fee structure of most collection agencies – which means our clients don’t pay unless they recover money – while also expertly and efficiently engaging the legal system to force intransigent debtors to pay.

Why It’s So Effective

We’re all bite and no bark – which means we are polite and respectful and take legal action as necessary to get you back the money you’re owed. Debtors have become conditioned to ignore empty threats from agencies and law firms who don’t sue. Agencies often don’t have the capability, and law firms are considered too expensive at traditional hourly rates to take the fight through the legal system.

We put our money where our mouth is and carry the cost burden of suing, with our clients only paying out-of-pocket disbursements until we recover money. We actually commence legal proceedings on suit-worthy accounts and follow through to obtain and enforce judgment, including defending groundless counter-claims and responding to meritless appeals.

Typical Outcomes

There are three typical outcomes of our legal collections process:

1 –  The debtor will pay the debt or a warranted discounted settlement
         voluntarily without a legal proceeding;

2 –  The debtor will be forced to pay the debt or a warranted discounted
         settlement by a legal proceeding; or

3 –   We will advise the client of why the debt is unrecoverable.

Contingency based collection means that payment for our work is contingent upon our success. If we are unsuccessful in our attempts to collect, you pay no fee.

Testimonials

When Todd approached me, I offered him a trial as one of the firms we used. A year into the scheduled 18-month pilot, he had delivered impressive results. His firm was collecting two to three times as much as the average of the other four law firms we used in Ontario. We dismissed the lowest performing law firm, giving all its business to Todd’s firm. At the end of the 18 months, we boosted Christensen Law Firm’s share. . . to 80 percent, the maximum we will allow.

- Wayne McLeish,B.A., LL.B, President & CEO, DRN Commerce (now FCT Default Solutions)