Hacker News Reader

Comment by coretx | Hacker News Reader

If your agreement is as firm as you say it is, continue what you are doing and /Sell/ the debt. You'll get a guaranteed percentage of the outstanding sum even if the ghost can't be tracked or prosecuted. The best part: No headaches, wasted time or bad PR due to dragging a client into a lawsuit.

View on HN

Who would you sell the debt to?

I believe the term is "factoring". There are collection and similar companies that will buy your collectibles. In my experience, they will not buy a single collectible. Instead, you enter into a contract to sell your on-going collectibles. One company that I researched wanted 100% of my collectibles or none at all. It is a good arrangement to help with cash-flow, but in my experience the terms and conditions are such that you will probably need to increase your rates by at least 30% to maintain your present revenue levels.

Factoring is a method of financing your business, say to buy raw materials to produce finished goods for sale. They want access to your receivables to make sure they are repaid. What the GP is referring to is a collection agency, where you sell a debt to them for $.10-$.30 on the dollar and they have all the rights to collect.

I ended up going with a no fee unless you win agency that keeps 35% of what they collect. Honestly, that seemed pretty fair to me.

I haven't seen results yet.

Same place other creditors/companies/banks/businesses sell their debt to - collections agencies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com