I’m not sure if I posted it here before, but a while back, we lent someone some money to get himself out of strife (get his licence back, get himself out of crap with his real estate).
Essentially we lent the dollars to this person on the condition that it’d be paid back over time, either progressively for the fines related one, and within a month for the real estate issue.
We persued that in writing, by SMS and by phone numerous times with the person involved, and essentially got nowhere. We got numerous broken promises, excuses, and delays, and nothing in the way of progress towards paying us back for the favour we did to pull him out of the ditch he was in.
We could almost certainly have left that person there, and considering the fact he got his licence back and as of around 12 months ago, still acts like an idiot on the road, committing crimes against people, it only seemed like we were helping him be a wanker.
So, we left it sleep a little, until he established himself in a new rental property, at what point this person told us they’d start paying it back after they got settled in. Fair enough. Moving is a big cost, certainly not cheap.
But none the less, we got nowhere in the months that followed that move. It’s been a complete problem getting even simply $5 a week, which would near settle the debt after the years the dollars have been on loan for.
So, earlier this week, we decided it was time to live up to what was promised over the course of several months, in writing to this person. We promised that we would take legal action against them to recover the debt, and such costs would be likely passed onto them.
We didn’t want to play hard ball, but there’s a line you must draw. When you lend a sum of money to someone, on 30 day terms and 12 months later it still isn’t being progressed, you need to immediately attack the issue and get the money back to demonstrate they cannot go through life, expecting everyone else to pick up after them.
The process proceeded this week, and initial unconfirmed information suggests that repayments will start in a timely and agreeable fashion.
It’s amazing what spending $100 of someone elses money will acheive. That of course was the fee for the courts to persue it, and was added to the debt.
The person involved is understood to have doubted the claim presented in a clearly marked local court envelope, and actually contacted them to confirm that the documents were legit. Obviously didn’t expect us to take the action we did, but now, should certainly see it is costing him even more money to ignore requests for payment and dish out broken promises.
It’s unfortunate for him that we had to waste $100 of his money to get a resolution he could have come to directly with us. But then, there’s that fear aspect involved when legal action is started against some people, who immediately fall back into line when the fire starts burning underneath them.
The good news for us (unconfirmed) is that he apparently will begin payments after Christmas, which is good news, we get our desired outcome that we’ve been pushing for, for a while now.
If the person involved actually grew a brain, and some money sense, and started using it, he’d never have got into a position where he’d need to borrow the money. But then again, if he had half a brain in the first place, he’d value his driving career and accomodation a little more so that it isn’t put at risk, due to poor self management.
Enjoy!