How the pricing works
Why we charge per account instead of a percentage.
This is the part of the program most people have never seen, and it is the reason the whole thing works differently from the agency you used before.
What a percentage fee actually does to your decisions
Under a contingency arrangement the agency takes a share of whatever it recovers. That sounds fair and it is easy to sell, because you only pay when you get paid. But look at what it does to your behavior.
The cost of collecting a balance scales with the size of the balance. So placing a small account is barely worth the trouble, and you end up placing only your largest and oldest ones. Meanwhile the agency has the same incentive from the other direction, and works the big files first. Small balances get minimal effort no matter who is holding them.
The result is that everybody focuses on the top of the aging report and the long tail never gets worked. For most practices and small businesses, the long tail is where most of the money is, because there is so much more of it.
What changes with a fixed fee
You pay a set amount per account placed. Recovering a large balance costs the same as recovering a small one, which means the small ones become worth placing. That single change is usually what moves the total recovered, not any difference in how hard someone chases a given account.
Some agencies market this as flat fee pricing. Same mechanic, different word for it.
Two of the three programs work this way: the early reminders sent in your name, and the third-party demand series. Money recovered under both comes directly to you and you keep all of it.
When contingency is still the right answer
I am not going to tell you percentage pricing is always wrong. For accounts well past ninety days, where the customer has stopped responding or moved, you need phone work, skip tracing, and sometimes legal effort. That is genuinely expensive to deliver, and paying a share of what comes back is the sensible structure for it. The third program is exactly that.
The mistake is not using contingency. The mistake is using contingency for everything, including accounts that would have paid a polite reminder at forty-five days.
One thing I will not do
I will not quote you a fee before I know what your receivables look like, and I am not going to publish a price on this page that turns out to be wrong for your situation. Send me a rough picture of your aging report and I will tell you what it costs and whether the math works. If it does not, I will say so.
Common questions
What happens if you do not collect anything?
On the fixed-fee programs you have still paid the per-account fee, the same way you would have paid staff time to make those calls yourself. On the contingency program you pay nothing.
Do I keep all of what is recovered?
On the two fixed-fee programs, yes. Payments go directly to you and no percentage is taken. Contingency collections is priced as a share of what is recovered.
Can I use both?
That is the normal setup. Fixed fee for the newer accounts, contingency for the ones that have gone quiet. Matching the program to the age of the account is most of the skill in this.
Start with a conversation, not a contract
Tell me what you are dealing with and I will tell you plainly whether I can help. If the answer is no, you will hear that too. There is nothing to sign and nothing to prepare beforehand.