Outstanding Invoices

[kerry davies]

Paul, phone up one of the councils and inform them that you have reason to believe that there is someone about to chop down the listed tree (from which the branch fell). If it is their land they will be onto it pretty sharpish, if it belongs to their fellow council they will soon let you know. If that doesn't work .... hire some Heras.

 

As for councils Roger, never had a problem and even got paid in advance more than once to help out their budgeting timings. Maybe I was lucky. Maybe not doing one night stands helped. Maybe because most of my work was with corporates, councils and fellow PSA members but I never got "stiffed" and used small claims only once.

[paulears]

Cheers guys - I actually caught a council official poking around and I chatted to him - he'd been sent to see which land it was and I think it was him who then went back and reported to the person I'm unable to speak to. My communications is very pro-forma. Copy and paste stuff, no real detail. I can re-open the case if I am unsatisfied, but this downgrades my complaint to stage 1 again, and it took a month to get to stage 2, which has now failed. I did copy in my new councillor - who didn't even respond. The amount is pretty small - £100, but the tree fell to about 45 degrees, hanging over the road and with no street lights any longer, I drove out of my drive straight into it - as I was turning right, and of course my headlights not pointing that way. the grass and the fallen tree were dealt with by the contractor both Councils use for maintaining parks and verges.

 

Sorry for drifting away from my original question on outstanding invoices. on that subject, one thing does annoy me - this clients who clearly write the cheque they insist on still paying by, on the day they receive the invoice, then they post it 30 days on - and then it takes another week to get the money!

[jlevene]

Start using Purchase Orders as well. You will be shocked at the amount of invoices you receive that are higher than the PO you sent, or no PO was sent at all and it went to another company instead.

 

When we switched to using POs at the last company I ran, we caught so much over charging and a few bogus invoices for hires we never used, we just enquired. Saved us a small fortune.

[MarkBarl]

Unless the branch fell as a result of neglect or a mistake (such a poor workmanship by someone cutting branches down) branch falls are seen as an "act of God" and if the land owner could not reasonably foresee the branch falling,