bob – the builder (part 3)

I have some good news – I have just received a fax from the National Bank to say that $10,000.00 has been deposited to our account. I will send you an email when it has arrived in the bank account.

30 January – 12.23pm – email from Dave (the debtor)
Michael,
Thankyou for your email. I had intended to transfer this yesterday. I have just faxed Bob a copy of the EFT remittance advice. Amount transferred today was $10,000.00 as requested.

Further to your suggested payment programme, whilst we will endeavour to adhear to your request we cannot guarantee that we will be able to supply those exact figures each month due to the nature of my industry we often are reliant on payments from others.

Fear of the Unknown was what encouraged Dave to pay. Bob had been very easy to ignore in the past, so Dave was able to get away without doing anything. We expected Bob’s letter (see part 1) to be ignored, and, it was. There was only a very loose ‘threat” and that was only that we’d have to take alternate action if nothing happened.

But then, Bob did take that alternate action. He introduced an unknown factor into play – me. An unknown quantity. My email (see part 2) used a 3-paragraph format.
paragraph 1 – state the facts.
paragraph 2 – say what you want the debtor to do
paragraph 3 – tell the debtor what will happen if he doesn’t do as requested.

No emotion. No nastiness. Just
* this is what happened,
* this is what we want, followed by
* this is what’ll happen if you don’t do what we want.