Yes, that is right - you order a service you have to pay for it!  We just had a company send us an order for a document search, with certified copies.  Noticing that they still owed us $26 for the last one we did for them three months ago, we told them they would have to pay their delinquent balance first.  So, they sent us a fax reading "please cancel."

Go figure!  These are the ones that really bother me.  Its not a lot of money, but we advanced fees for those certified copies and spent time gathering and returning them.  $26 certainly isn't enough to waste time collecting, but I'm not going to get in deeper.

Speaking of which - I heard a new one from a client a couple of weeks ago.  Upon notice that we wouldn't complete any more work for them until they paid their delinquent balance of $159 - they asked us to refax the invoices.  Their response was "Those are more than 90 old, we don't pay anything more than 90 old."

Despite sending them a monthly statement that showed their delinquent balance, they refused to pay it.  Apparently, it is my fault for not collecting it sooner. (Huh?) That one is getting turned in to a collection agency tomorrow.  Not because its worth it, but because of their attitude.  How arrogant! 

Watch out!  We are just dropping clients like that - they don't want to pay for what they order because they know that its not worth our time to spend hours of hassling with their accounts payable person.  If they cheat every abstractor out of hundred bucks or so, they make a nice little profit.

Best,
Robert A. Franco
SOURCE OF TITLE