Paying bills can be a real burden. It seems to be a continuous merry-go-round of cash going out, which leaves plenty of people out of pocket and is as frustrating as it is time consuming.
Of course, most people will try and manage to pay the bills on time but, unfortunately, sometimes people fail to do so for a variety of reasons.
In most instances, it will be a cash flow problem and in nine out of ten cases it will be sorted out pretty quickly. It did get us thinking, however, what reasons do some people give (whether it be business or individually) for missing payments. We decided to do a bit of research and devised a list of the most common excuses for missed payments.
As predicted, right at the top of the excuse tree, is the simple fact that the person doesn’t have the money to pay their bill. You’d be surprised at how many people live by the skin of their financial teeth on a monthly basis. If you fit into this category you should try to steady the ship as continuously missing payments will leave you in a sticky financial situation and will also adversely affect your credit rating.
Another common reason given for not paying bills on time is losing the bill itself. This excuse is getting a little less common in this digital age when it is very easy to ping a bill across in an email and a lot of bills are getting sent automatically anyway. For people still receiving paper bills, however, this reason is a feasible one. A constant paper mountain is easy to accumulate and things can, and very often do, go awry. Forgetfulness and misplacing bills are very common.
From a business point of view, excuses are slightly different. Some of the most common in the commercial workplace include that there is no one available in the accounts office and that the business has gone into receivership.
The latter excuse is something you should always be suspicious of as it would be a mighty coincidence that the firm would go bust right around the time that they were due to make payment.
You need to look into it and get confirmation before taking anything as gospel.
Finally, another common corporate ploy is to say those sweet words; “There’s no-one in accounts to deal with your payment”. In the politest way – what a load of crud. If that is the case, you should ask to speak to the powers-that-be at the company – if they can’t deal with it, it shouldn’t be a business at all.