If you read post, you know it included a poll asking how many days after cut-off you wait before closing accounts that haven’t paid. Based on the results of that poll, it was clear the choices way underestimated how long most utilities waited. As a result, I sent an e-mail last week with a revised poll that increased the maximum choice from 10 days or more to 21 days or more.
Revised poll results
Thank you to those of you who participated in the revised poll. The new poll had more than twice as many responses as the first version.
Here are the results of the revised poll:
Still surprised
I’m very surprised that two-thirds of the responses wait three weeks (or more) to finalize an account that is off for non-payment and hasn’t paid. Understandably, some utilities have policies where there always has to be an active account receiving a bill – even if the property is vacant. For these utilities, and those where only property owners are billed, accounts are never closed until the property is sold.
Why wait?
For utilities without such a policy or that bill tenants, why wait so long? By final billing the account, you are able to apply the customer’s deposit and offset any potential bad debt. The sooner you do so, the sooner the customer’s deposit becomes an asset for you, rather than a liability. If you represent one of the utilities responding with 21 days or more, I would be interested in hearing why you wait that long. Have you seen cases where customers show up more than three weeks after being cut off and finally pay? Or is this just something that isn’t a priority?
