Is the economy that bad? **Update**

[greeneggsandham]

Quick insite:

I work for a Waste to Energy plant. We get around 700tons of MWS (munipcal soild waste) in daily from several different haulers/customers. The MSW is then burned and turned into steam that creates electricity.

We bill our hauler/customers on a weekly basis. They get tickets at the scale house that shows gross weight, tare weight, and the net weight. So if there are any issues or discrepanies the drivers can get them taken care of before they leave the plant.

Now back to the question I put in the subject line.

I get an e-mail today from one of the hauler/customers stating they are disputing some tickets and to please see the attached spreadsheet.

I open said spreadsheet to find they are disputing tickets back to January 1, 2010.

Are you kidding me?
And they are expecting to get a credit of $61,240.00. What company does not look at their invoices? And by the looks of it just about all but maybe 8 tickets are from the same truck.

Is the ecomony that bad that companies are trying to find ways to get money back?

Now on a side note I have had other haulers call me with ticket issues, but it was always the day after the truck had dumped never after a billing cycle and certianly not almost two years later.

Thanks for letting me rant. As this is not something I want to have to deal with going into the weekend.


****So we had the meeting yesterday and after all was said and done we are giving the company credit for any invoices from the last 60 days and that is it. They are not happy at all. There were some of our corporate accounts receiveable people here for the meeting which was a great thing.
What I didn't know was this company since the middle of last year has not been paying their bills on time and had racked up a good amount of late charges and intrest charges that we forgave over the months.

 

[I have WHAT in my yard?]

Yes companies are trying everything they can, but that is ridiculous. That's too far back for you to be able to resolve any dispute. Tell them they have 60 days 30 days or something to dispute bills and they did not do that so too bad so sad.

OK in better business-like terms but same idea......

BTW your bills should probably have some statement to that effect on them anyway. For future reference.

 

[greeneggsandham]

Every invoice that is sent out has in bold letters at the bottem near the total due: Please review the invoice and contact ****** with any questions, discrepancies, or issues immediately at ***** thank you.

 

[FireTigeris]

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[dewey]

It can be such a bummer to have things like that coming in on a friday & hanging over one's head over the weekend.

If the company discovered $60K+ that they were not paid for, sounds like they had a new audit or perhaps a 2nd pass audit by a different recovery company (and sounds like for good reason, too, if the yearly auditing that was in place missed $60K). It's not uncommon for audits to go back a minimum of 2 years, especially 2nd pass audits. The time that's lapsed doesn't seem unusual considering that audits can take several months to complete. Errors and oversights happen due to many reasons...it's common business practice to audit and recover their lost revenue. With the economy this terrible you can bet that even smaller companies are having 2nd pass audits completed to hopefully recover any lost revenue.

 

[NellaBean]

Thats pretty annoying yet seems to be common these days. I have a very large customer who orders millions of dollars worth of product every year. Mid summer they started disputing deliveries.....going back to March. This is product that has already been used at that point

I send them a weekly spreadsheet with every open order with estimated ship dates on remaining product and shipment dates, carrier names and estimated delivery dates on closed orders. Once we picked through everything, they were disputing 3 deliveries. But rather than seeing proof of deliveries for those 3 deliveries, they wanted proof of deliveries on all 57 deliveries on that order. They are just hoping we cant get one now, months and months after the fact, so they cant be made to pay for the others.

Annoying. Their most recent pricing update reflected the annoying value of this.

 

[I have WHAT in my yard?]

The other thing you might consider taking this as a warning of: the company being in financial straits.

If they had an audit that turned up a loss that large they probably had other large losses as well. I know several companies who tried to do forensic accounting investigations after realizing they were in deep trouble. Only in one case did the accounting do anything other than confirm the death knell of the business. Be cautious is extending them credit.

 

[redhen]

I dont blame them one bit. Thats a LOT of money to be jipped out of...

 

[debilorrah]

Where I work, we are federally and locally funded through grants and taxes. As the person that pays the bills I can tell you that every single bill that crosses my desk is scrutinized beyond belief.

I would say that company has an issue in their accounting department. That person is probably fired by now and the company is trying to fix a major screw up.

 

[redhen]

Agreed.. i bet accounting is just catching it now..