Advance bank cash fax no no statement

Advancing charges - small business struggle with on-time collection - Brief Article

Annie Turner wishes that we, like the mobile phone companies, could be pre-paid.

I HAVE A LOT OF TROUBLE getting paid on time -- although I chase everybody with equal enthusiasm on 30 days -- and it has set me thinking. Last week I was told, "Don't be angry with me, it's not my fault," the age-old refrain of those who owe money. It's never the accounts department, it must be those upstairs who have to sign it off who in turn insist they dealt with it ages ago, or the person who knows all about it, has just broken their leg/gone on maternity leave/ holiday/lunch. It is unfortunate that by the sixth or seventh phone call over a number of weeks, I do end up getting snotty with someone who genuinely has come across the problem for the first time.

I do think that the phrase, "Could you bear with me?" should be banned from the English language as the rejoinder invariably is, "Do I have any option?" and that's the polite version.

I run an overdraft much of the time which is galling when at any given time I am usually owed several thousand pounds. What is even more irritating is that those who owe me money are very often multi-billion dollar corporations who typically want you to do the work yesterday, but who commission the work several weeks in advance of anyone getting round to issuing a purchase order, by which time the job itself is a distant memory. I normally bulldoze my way through it by persistence -- they pay me to go away, but it never ceases to stagger me how many people are involved in the chain -- many of whom it must be said are polite and helpful, it's just that they are a cog in a big machine that grinds slow and small.

This is not just a personal gripe. Half of this country's income is provided by SMEs. You can't expect someone in the accounts department necessarily to have a deep sense or irony when they are chasing a payment between Paris and London or London and Dublin or Lord knows where else, but these are the very companies whose entire existence and share price is built on exigencies. For example, they sell or rely on super-fast fibre optics whose capacity and speed blow the mind, like trying to visualise light years. They push e-procurement and all types of e-business that allow people to do their business faster and better and with less pain. Can't say my bank account has noticed, but their share prices are super-sensitive to any suggestions that they are not performing up to scratch.

While Lloyds Bank in Southwark has always been extraordinarily accommodating (although to circumvent the wretched call centre I now have to fax my branch to get them to call me), I still pay handsomely for the privilege of running an almost constant overdraft. I wonder how many other people have less helpful bank managers or how many businesses -- even substantial ones -- go bust, due to cash flow problems which is the most common cause of businesses failing. The other thing of course is, that on the whole, I probably get better attention than I merit in economic terms because I am a journalist and we are perceived as wielding some power -- I shudder to think what lots of other small businesses are forced to endure -- 90 days if they are lucky.

It's no wonder that the mobile phone companies have soared like rockets, along with their share prices, since the widespread introduction of prepayment. What a great pity that most of the rest of us don't get to charge in advance for our services too.

And, oh, what fun -- just days after the Government managed to extract the astonishing sum of 22.5bn [pounds sterling] out of the five companies wishing to build third generation mobile networks in the UK, the Stewart report was published warning us to keep our children away from mobile phones because they might damage their still-developing brains.

It looks doubtful that such warnings will put the dampers on the UK continuing to be a mobile Mecca, but the timing was impeccable. Having just coughed up so much dough for permission to spend billions more on building the infrastructure, the report has put some doubt into some minds. As one consultant I know -- who makes an awful lot of money out of the mobile industry -- commented to me some considerable time ago, "Well I don't know if there are health risks associated with mobile phones, but there certainly isn't any evidence to prove that there isn't. I always use an earpiece myself and make sure my family does the same."

The consultant concerned is also very keen on quoting the nineteenth century French novelist Emile Zola who said, "Behind every big fortune there is a big crime." Let's hope in this case it doesn't turn out to be the mobile industry reassuring us that there are no long term ill-effects from our apparent addiction to any time, anywhere phone calls.

Without doubt though there is a big crime here; the Government's. Its approach of grabbing as much money as possible (and to use it, for of all things, to pay off the National Debt, not for pensioners, hospital or schools) is a stupid, badly thought out measure -- and it's not just me that thinks so. Let me quote a statement put out by that august body the Telecommunications Managers Association: "nobody from [the Exchequer] wants to tell us what the long-term effects on Britain's mobile telecoms industry might be. Instead the DTI is now trailing the prospect of running a similar auction, this autumn, for Broadband Fixed Wireless Access.

"[We] are not impressed with the economists' blinkered view or by the likely impact of the DTI's folly upon the rollout of the Information Society to every citizen. The cost [incurred by the auction] will affect the prices charged to customers. The DTI's policy has led to a position where licence holders may be financially over-extended, shareholders' interests might be damaged and where consumers will be hit with, effectively, a new tax."

So if cash flow doesn't kill you, living in a technologically and therefore economically disadvantaged country might. No wonder Mark Twain wrote that the only two sure things in life are death and taxes. Hang on to those prepayments, boys, you're gonna need them.