Credit Protection in the Freight Industry
We have a member that is a freight company in East Anglia. They have a nice line working for retail chains, providing the fit out for new stores and delivering all their stock on a regular basis, globally.
Saving them from a potential stumble
A business owner based in New Zealand was setting up a franchise in New Zealand of a retail business based in Cyprus. Our member was approached by the Cypriot business and asked to ship all the required fit out stock to New Zealand. ‘The Cypriot business wanted them to do this on credit and we are talking about £10,000 worth of credit for the shipment.
That was some risk for our member, so they came to the Credit Protection Association. After obtaining an international status report from the CPA, our member decided that it would not be prudent to provide open credit terms with the Cypriot business and instead asked to be paid up front for the transportation. The equipment was already loaded and ready to be shipped to New Zealand when the franchisee suddenly pulled out of buying the franchise. If our member had proceeded without checking their credit then they could have sent £10,000 into the sunset on a cancelled order with no means to recover their cost from their customer or the recipient. We do not know if the two events are connected but by obtaining the status report our member saved themselves £10,000 and are very thankful that they are members.
Getting them paid
The same member also reported that having chased an outstanding debt with an existing customer through CPA, the customer after receiving our communications, contacted our member and arranged a four staged payment with them to settle the outstanding balance, the first payment was received yesterday.
Conclusion
It serves to demonstrate how the CPA system, providing all the credit management tools a business could need under the one roof, really benefits our members. Our credit reports can prevent you getting into difficult trading spots and then should those with good credit become bad payers, we can prompt punctual payment!
We at CPA having been helping businesses like this since 1914! Contact us at the Credit Protection Association and find out how we could help you.
Give us a call on 0330 053 9263 or get in contact.