unpaid collections

English translation: (costs involved) in getting invoices/bills/credit card paid (including by using collection agencies)

14:23 Mar 1, 2013

English language (monolingual) [PRO]
Bus/Financial - Finance (general)

English term or phrase: unpaid collections

I am translating a statement of general conditions of sale and delivery.
One of the clauses reads as follows:
,,A reminder will be sent for any invoice which has not been paid in full upon thirty (30) days after the date of the invoice. Fifteen (15) days after the date of the reminder, such invoice shall automatically and without additional notice be increased by an amount of 5% of the amount remaining due, with a minimum of two hundreds (200) EUR to cover any costs and damages incurred by the XXXX as a result of the non-payment, without prejudice to XXXX’s right to demonstrate higher damages. Furthermore, any costs of unpaid collections, cheques or bills of exchange, as well as all costs for change or transfer of money, exceeding this amount shall also be borne by the Customer.

I can’t quite make out what ‘’unpaid collections’’ mean in this context.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Grzegorz Mysiński KudoZ activity Questions: 1926 (1 open) (45 closed without grading) Answers: 1782 Poland
Local time: 12:07

Selected answer:(costs involved) in getting invoices/bills/credit card paid (including by using collection agencies)

Explanation:
I worked in collections for a while for a credit card company.
Clients were split into 30, 60, 90 and + days overdue. The longer the account is overdue the harder it is to get it paid and these accounts sometimes get "sold" on to collection agencies with the creditor just getting a percentage of the final collection if any (sometimes the debt is just written off as it would cost too much to recover)

Costs for collection can also include phone calls, letters, legal letters and fees and so on

Basically any overdue unpaid bill goes into collection in-house or external

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Note added at 1 hr (2013-03-01 16:19:31 GMT)
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http://www.debtrecoveryuk.net/

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Note added at 3 days1 hr (2013-03-04 16:20:12 GMT) Post-grading
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glad to have helped

Selected response from:

Yvonne Gallagher
Ireland
Local time: 11:07

Grading comment

Thank you gallagy2!
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer

SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED

4 +2

(costs involved) in getting invoices/bills/credit card paid (including by using collection agencies)

Yvonne Gallagher

effort to recover bad debt

Roman Bardachev

Answers

50 mins confidence:

effort to recover bad debt

Explanation:
"Collection" is an effort of the creditor to recover the money due. Typically this takes place when an account is substantially overdue with little or no potential to get paid.

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Note added at 3 hrs (2013-03-01 18:10:39 GMT)
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Let's get it straight folks. The context (not the term) says "costs of unpaid collections". To begin with, there is no such thing as "unpaid collections". There is, however, such a thing as "collection of arrears". So, technically, the language of the original is sloppy to begin with. My answer, therefore, should be read in the context, as in "any costs of the effort to recover bad debt (or arrears". Looks pretty straightforward to me.

Roman Bardachev
Canada
Local time: 04:07
Specializes in field
Native speaker of: Russian

Notes to answerer

Asker: Thank you too!

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)

agree

Polangmar: Unpaid effort? How can one calculate how much the effort is worth in terms of money? || The term to be explained is "UNPAID collectionS", not "collection". || OK, the additional explanation has it.

52 mins

-> Where did I say "unpaid effort"? An effort to recover a bad debt (referred to as collection) involves a cost as typically the creditor would involve a collection agency // There is no such thing as "UNPAID collectionS"

disagree

AllegroTrans: "unpaid effort" doesn't make sense, it's about amounts of money/// the ST says "unpaid" so this is clearly about costs and expenses incurred

1 hr

-> Yes it is about the costs. In fact the word "costs" precedes "unpaid collections" in the original. Nobody's saying it isn't about the costs.

1 hr confidence:

peer agreement (net): +2

(costs involved) in getting invoices/bills/credit card paid (including by using collection agencies)

Yvonne Gallagher
Ireland
Local time: 11:07
Specializes in field
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in category: 44

Grading comment

Thank you gallagy2!

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unpaid collections

English translation: (costs involved) in getting invoices/bills/credit card paid (including by using collection agencies)

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