Not everyone is willing to pay when payment is due for a product or service they have received. Sometimes this is because they don’t have the cash, but more often than not, it’s because they just don’t want to part with it. There are no acceptable excuses. If you agree to pay for something, you pay for it. Not doing so is basically akin to theft.
The way some products and services work is that a person receives the product or service before they are required to pay. Obviously having to pay up front before you receive the product or service removes the problem of a customer who fails to pay. You pay for a holiday before you go on it. You pay for something online before it arrives in the post.
But some things are expectedly the other way around. In situations like this, it is very easy for someone lacking a few morals to receive the product or service and run. Run without paying. A person who does this becomes a debtor. And a debtor who doesn’t want to pay can become a very difficult person to track down.
Private investigators can help
Private investigators have experience tracing debtors. It is one of the most important motivations for tracing people among their clients. Sometimes debtors will not answer their phones, emails or front doors. Sometimes they will go one step further than that and move house.
Private investigators have a range of tools, training and experience at their disposal to trace elusive debtors. It might be that you want a private investigator to simply confirm that your debtor is still at the address that you have on record. If your debtor has moved, then you want a private investigator to use a variety of investigative techniques to find out where they’ve gone. Such techniques might be database tracing, filter tracing, trace and serve, trace and contact, trace and credit score, background checks, online and financial checks and looking at employer information.
It might be that you suspect another person of knowing where your debtor is and you want to arrange some covert surveillance of that person in case they lead you right to your debtor. Private investigators can help with that, too.
Debt recovery and process serving
It’s often the case that private investigators have a wide remit and work in all kinds of areas. They do not simply trace people. They can help with the debt recovery process once they’ve found your debtor as well. They can initiate the process whereby you can get an Attachment of Earnings Order, which means an amount is deducted regularly from your debtor’s wages until the debt is fully repaid. They can also do asset tracing and volume tracing to help you decide whether your debtor has sufficient property which could be seized and sold to reimburse you.
Some private investigators will also be experienced process servers as well. This involves serving legal documents on a defendant which give notice of a specific court action. In debt recovery cases, this might be serving a statutory demand for payment, or serving proceedings when you have decided to sue your debtor. They can then prepare certificates or statements of service to make sure you are properly compliant with the law.
If you are having problems with a debtor who is reluctant or refusing to pay, Global Investigations can help. We can first trace the debtor if that is the first hurdle to be overcome, and our experience tracing debtors and other people is second to none. In 2013, we won the Acquisition International M&A Award for UK Tracing Firm of the Year. We can also advise on and initiate debt recovery proceedings and are expert process servers.
