Frequently asked questions

In fact, all of this costs you nothing, because the costs will be recovered from your customer. However, you will be required to make an advance payment of these minimal costs.

The price of the service is broken down into two types of costs. On one hand, the costs for the lawyers’ verification of the eligibility of your case (40 euros, excl. VAT), and on the other hand, the cost of the bailiff who must make an on-site visit and draw up an official report of non-contestation. The cost for this will depend on the amount of your claim.

The advance payments will amount to a total of:

In addition to the principal sum and the costs, for which you will receive full repayment, Unpaid may also be able to collect interest and damages from your customer. Depending on the terms of your invoice, these may be up to a maximum of 10% of the total invoice amount and are intended to finance the operating costs of Unpaid.

The bailiff will attempt to recover all costs for the service (€ 40.00 excl. VAT), as well as the bailiff's costs, from your customer.

By working fully automatically we have been able to keep the cost of our services very low. In addition to the € 40 (excluding VAT), Unpaid also withholds any interest and damages that can be recovered from the debtor. This can amount to a maximum of 10% of the invoice amount.

When you submit a case to us, we ask you for an advance payment. We use this to pay the bailiff fees. Once your case is completed and the invoice has been collected, we refund this advance in full.

At Unpaid, we make every effort to bring every case we receive to a successful conclusion. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee 100% success. After all, we work in an environment of defaulters. We are therefore proud of our success rate of around 80%.

If your case is among the 20% that we are unable to settle despite our best efforts, there may be a cost. Fortunately, you almost always get at least part of the advance payment back. Moreover, we will never charge any additional costs on top of this advance payment without discussing this with you beforehand. If your advance payment is not sufficient, we will cover the additional costs incurred. We can guarantee this 100%.

How do we calculate the reimbursement for an unsettled file?

• Termination in consultation with you
   

  When you submit your file, our system automatically checks your customer's solvency free of charge. As we do not want to leave anything to chance, our bailiff also carries out a solvency check. In this way, we check whether your customer's solvency has worsened significantly recently.

  If we estimate that there is a high probability that your client will be unable to pay, we will discuss with you whether we should proceed. If you do not want us to continue, we refund your advance after deducting €90 (excl. VAT) for administration costs and the solvency investigation.
  
  If this option is selected, you will also automatically receive a certificate of irrecoverability, free of charge. Using this certificate, you can easily remove the outstanding debt from your books and recover any VAT already paid.

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  Termination by contesting the invoice
   

  After the bailiff has served a reminder on your client, he/she can still contest the invoice within a period of 38 days. Does this also meet the correct formal requirements? If so then your invoice is no longer legally considered to be undisputed and we are obliged to stop the collection procedure. Our figures are favourable in this respect: we only have to terminate 4 to 5% of the files for this reason.

  If you are in such a case, we refund your advance payment after deduction of the handling fee and bailiff's costs incurred. Usually you will then receive slightly less than half of your advance back. However, the exact amount depends on when the customer disputes the invoice. Of course, you can include these costs in a procedure through the court should you decide to do so.

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  Termination due to bankruptcy of your custome

  Within the market of bad debts, we can never give a complete answer to what the future will bring for your customer. Thanks to our double solvency investigation, it rarely happens that a customer goes bankrupt while our procedure is running.

  If your client does go bankrupt after the bailiff has obtained the judgement, your advance payment is usually used up. If the actual bailiff fees incurred are less than your advance payment, we will of course refund the remaining amount to you.

  In summary: a non-settled file (20% of the cases) can cost you something, but this cost is never higher than the advance payment that you have made to us. In most cases, you will still receive part of your advance back. We never charge additional costs on top of the deposit unless we have explicitly asked your permission first.

When you submit a claim with Unpaid, you’re automatically protected by our cost insurance. This unique system ensures that you know in advance what the maximum possible cost could be.

In most cases, you don’t pay anything at all. If we successfully recover the debt (which happens in about 75% of cases), you receive 100% of your invoice amount. If you’ve paid an advance, we’ll refund it to you.

Unfortunately, sometimes recovery isn’t possible, for example, if your client goes bankrupt or if all enforcement options are exhausted during the procedure. Thanks to our thorough screening, we try to minimize that risk, but it can never be completely ruled out.

What if several steps have already been taken and the costs start to rise?
That’s when our cost insurance comes in. It guarantees that you’ll never pay more than our standard rates, even if the actual bailiff’s fees are higher. We’ll cover the difference ourselves.

This system is truly unique. A bailiff is not legally allowed to give discounts, so in a similar situation you would always pay more elsewhere. Likewise, if you work directly with a lawyer, you cannot benefit from this protection.

Please note:
There’s one exception to this guarantee. If, together with the bailiff, we determine that the claim is legally unfeasible (for example, due to your client’s insolvency), you may still choose to continue the case. This sometimes happens for large amounts or matters of principle. In that situation, the cost insurance no longer applies.

But don’t worry: we always discuss this with you in advance and communicate clearly if that’s the case. So you’ll never face any surprises.

No, we don't believe in no cure, no pay. In our opinion, good service cannot be free of charge.

With us, you pay an advance that we recover from your client. When paid by your customer, you get 100% of the claimed amount, 100% of the advance, and on top of that, the VAT on the claim of maximum 10%. This way, if everything goes well at the end of the trip, you get 102.10% of the principal sum, and all costs back!

However, in a very limited number of cases, you may not be able to recover part or all of the advance. This happens if your debtor goes bankrupt or goes into WCO (the former judicial reorganisation) during the course of the procedure. In those cases, the procedure is automatically terminated, and we reimburse the unused part of the advance. You can try to recover the part that you have lost as a company as a creditor in the bankruptcy court or the WCO. We conduct a double solvency investigation at the start of the procedure to do all we can to avoid the above. In this way, we prevent companies that are in very bad shape from ending up in the process. This also ensures that our clients do not incur unnecessary costs.

The advance that you pay to Unpaid covers all costs up to, and including, obtaining the title (judgment).

Costs for the seizure and a possible public sale are not included. Again, we will always recover these costs from the debtor. We monitor the solvency of the debtors at all times. If we think that there is a high risk of additional and non-recoverable costs, we will contact you. You then decide for yourself whether or not you want to go further. If you decide to go further, you will still recover all costs in the event of a successful collection. If the collection does not succeed (i.e. debtor goes bankrupt or in WCO) it is possible that we can recover these additional costs from you. However, this is only possible if we have clearly agreed this with you beforehand. The starting point is that you can never incur additional costs without us having explicitly informed you of this. At that moment, you can always decide to stop the procedure. Thanks to our extensive solvency checks at the start of each case, this situation is, fortunately, rare.

We do the mandatory legal checks for you and forward your file to the bailiff. The bailiff will then conduct a creditworthiness check and, if positive, send a reminder to your client. He will deliver this reminder to your client in person. In the absence of a response from your client, the bailiff will draw up a verbal report of no contest and take the necessary steps to obtain a 'judgment.'

If your client has not paid by this point, the stronger follow-up steps of seizure, public sale, etc. will be pursued to force your client to pay. These additional costs are not included in the above rates. They will also be recovered from the debtor as much as possible. If there is a risk of additional costs to you as our customer, we will always contact you in advance to discuss this. You will never risk additional costs without having been informed about them. Moreover, if there is a risk of additional costs, you can decide to stop the case.

If the judicial officer has to incur additional execution costs, these costs are not included. These costs will only be incurred after consultation and explicit agreement with you. These costs will also be recovered from the debtor as much as possible. The primary intention is to recover the principal sum and all costs at the end of the process. There can never be any additional costs without you being informed about this risk.

Once you have submitted your claim, we will get started immediately. Your claim is processed and the bailiff starts a solvency investigation and begins preparing the formal notice. This means that we immediately incur a number of costs. If, for a good reason (for example, your customer appears to have paid), you wish to cancel the claim, we will refund the full advance if this occurs within 12 hours of submitting the claim.

If you decide to stop the case within 48 hours of submitting the claim, you will receive your advance back, with deduction of € 40 (excl. VAT) for the administrative costs and € 55 (excl. VAT) for the solvency investigation.

If you are notified by the bailiff that the solvency is questionable and you therefore decide to stop the claim, we will also refund the advance after deducting € 40 for the administrative costs and € 55 for the solvency investigation. At that point, you can also opt to receive an additional tax certificate for € 30.45 (excl. VAT). You will also receive an automatic certificate of irrecoverability free of charge. With that, you can remove the unpaid invoice from your turnover records and recover any VAT already paid.

It's different, once the formal notice has been served. The idea is always for the debtor to pay the full debt, including all costs, to the bailiff. In exceptional cases, the debtor may pay the outstanding debt directly to you. In that case, the costs incurred will still have to be paid. For these, the bailiff will send a balance letter to the debtor, free of charge, and the execution can still be continued. If you wish to close the case, the costs will consist of the costs you have advanced and the compensation clause that amounts to a maximum of 10% of the principal sum. The decision whether or not to waive these costs is entirely up to you. But waiving them would mean that you will not get back any advanced costs and that you will have to pay the compensation clause.