It seems we have had more and more of our new clients come from collection agencies that weren’t giving good results, or in many cases have gone out of business. In any event, you need to make sure that the transition to a new (hopefully better) collection agency is fast and easy.
If your agency is not putting up the numbers and you want to switch, chances are it could be as simple as providing a letter to cancel accounts. Most contracts have a 30 day notice to cancel clause, which allows you to give a written 30 day notice to cancel all accounts that do not have any current payment arrangements. It’s obviously not a good idea to cancel an account that may have a payment arrangement, and is making steady payments to get the account cleared up. Sometimes shaking things up for an already skeptic patient will give them enough cause to refuse to pay altogether.
In the event that your collection agency has gone out of business, you will need to make sure you get a few things from them (hopefully before the doors close for good). First and foremost, you will need a current listing of ALL placed accounts. Heavy emphasis on the ALL, as it’s important to have 100% accountability for every single account. Some agencies, like ours, will take accounts that have been placed prior, but will need assurance that they’re not contacting someone that has already paid, or worse, had a legitimate dispute and should never have been contacted again.
After you have given your notice to cancel, it’s imperative that you wait the 30 days to place any accounts with the new agency. And while your chance of recovering that old placement is low, it’s worth at least sending it through another agency to get closure. In many cases, the old agency had stopped working on accounts well before they told their clients of the closure.
