How do you collect personal debts from someone?

It is a very familiar situation that many people have been in, you loaned a friend some money for a small personal item like a piece of furniture, or some white goods. The person may even be in your family. A few weeks go by and the person makes more and more promises to pay, however they never make good on their promises. You could really do with that money, it would be nice to be able to spend it on something that you actually you want or it could be in the bank accumulating interest. It becomes very frustrating, the fact that the person doesn’t realise that it was a large favour to them for you to loan the money. However, it is increasingly the case that if you do not demand payment, you are likely to miss out because of the rising personal and household debt levels of virtually everyone who lives in Australia or in any Western country. People usually have a large amount of expenses to meet, such as groceries, rent, a mortgage, council rates and if they have family there will be a whole range of expenses related to children. This means that if a personal debt is owed by someone, you go down the priority list for a payment because you are the least likely to cause harm to the person if they do not pay you.

What can you do in this situation?

Although personal debts are often quite sensitive, it is often the case that if the matter is referred to a debt collection agency or to a debt collection lawyer, when the debt is between two people who know each other very well or there is an issue of reputation at stake than the likelihood that they will pay as a result of the referral to an external independent third-party is extremely high. For this reason, we recommend referring a matter like this to a debt collection agency to see if the amount can be recovered quickly and easily.