Inflation and shrinkflation have been a lot in the news lately. Everywhere you look, you have to pay more for less money, and no one seems particularly happy about it.
However, there is at least one exception to this trend: Blue Book members now receive more service at a significantly lower cost.
In this article, we discuss a relatively new (as of late 2023) free service called Courtesy Contacts and the new pricing that will be introduced in 2024 for Blue Book’s traditional debt collection assistance services.
Together with our Trade and transport guidelines and our Claims Activity Tables (or “CAT”), we believe that the trading assistance services offered to members are now better than ever – and we hope you agree!
Courtesy contacts
Courtesy contacts can be viewed as a “nudge” that members can use to get their overdue accounts paid without having to take the more serious step of initiating debt collection proceedings.
When a user sends a Courtesy Contact message, the delinquent account receives an email from Blue Book Services with the following content:
Dear __________:
Although no claim has been made to date, _____________
has asked us to send you a message regarding the invoice number(s)
__________ from the __________.
Since one or more of these invoices appear to be overdue,
We ask you to reply to this email and
_______________ and Blue Book with a status update.
Again, no claim has been made, this is not a credit rating event
at this time, but we encourage you to try to resolve
this matter as soon as possible.
Thank you very much,
Trade Support Team
Blue Book Services
Courtesy contacts are “courtesy” because they do not appear in the claim activity table or credit sheet (unlike unpaid claims).
However, Courtesy Contacts give the customer another opportunity to resolve the matter before releasing the account for collection. To date, Courtesy Contacts have been very effective, with most users receiving their payment without having to release the account for collection.
Debt collection support
Blue Book’s debt collection and dispute resolution services have been a popular, members-only tool for decades. When debtors go over their debts, they don’t just stop paying everyone. They make choices.
And Blue Book members who make legitimate claims tend to get paid more quickly. This is partly because outstanding claims appear in the Claims Activity Tables of all Blue Book-listed firms.
Our fees have always been low, but now they are even lower, ranging from 0 to 10 percent of the amount recovered.
For example, as shown in the table below, a creditor with a standard membership pays only 5 percent of the amount collected from it – free if nothing is collected – and only 2 percent of the amount collected if the creditor provides our Ratings Group with information on the maturity of its claims (A/R).
And no, your eyes are not deceiving you! Premium and Enterprise members who are A/R aging submitters enjoy the service for free.
Why do we do this? First, we know that debt collection and dispute resolution services are key elements of a Blue Book membership.
Members rely on these services to resolve disputes and clean up slow-paying accounts. We don’t want the cost of these services to eat up all the margin applicants put into the original transaction.
And second, just as important, the data from collections activity helps populate the claim activity tables and create Blue Book ratings and scores. Supporting your credit extension decisions is, of course, the core of what Blue Book Services is all about.
Three bites into the apple
Not sure how best to recover a past due balance?
Please note that submitting a Courtesy Contact request or initiating collection proceedings with Blue Book does not prevent you from pursuing your claim later under the USDA Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act (PACA) – just be aware of the nine-month statute of limitations – or through a third-party collection agency and/or legal channels to which we may refer you.
Essentially, members now have three options: Option 1: Submit a Courtesy Contact request. Option 2: Open a Blue Book claim. Option 3: Pursue your claim through PACA or an outside debt collection agency and/or through legal channels.
If you have any questions or comments on how we can improve our trading assistance services, please let us know. Thank you.
This column, “Trading Assistance,” appeared in the July/August issue of Produce Blueprints magazine. Click here to read the digital copy of the issue.
