This week we started charging a $2.00 fee for mailing invoices to residential customers, however we will still send invoices by e-mail for free. Anybody else doing this? How is it being received (or not received)?
Steve, I take it the charge is for the extra office work/materials involved.
If it were a serious issue to me I think I would just figure that into the overall price on my next visit, just so I wouldn’t make the customer feel penalized for this request.
+1 :eek:
I have a few questions.
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Why isn’t an invoice left at the time of service. You’re at the home anyways. If the customer isn’t home to hand it to them you can still leave it in their mail box. It doesn’t have to be a fancy invoice with logo and all; just a simple receipt book slip.
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Every customer that has a legit relationship with a service company is obviously expecting an invoice at works end, why would you bill them to send them the …uh…bill?
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Do you make the customer aware before service commences that if you mail them their invoice, they will be charged an extra $2?
Personally, if I was charged extra from a service company because they mailed me my invoice (when they could have just handed it to me or left it for me), I don’t think I would want to do business with them again.
But I’m not your customer so who knows? :o
These are all legitimate questions:
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Leaving a bill is a good idea, the only reason that we haven’t done that is because we found it was a nightmare when the technician forgets to leave the bill in the mailbox and when the customer doesn’t pay we find the bill laying in the floorboard of the work truck a month later.
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I have relationships with vendors that send my statements by fax or email but charge a small fee if I want a paper bill mailed - my fuel vendor for one and my payroll company for another. The issue is not that we want to charge to bill, just give people an incentive to get the bill my e-mail instead.
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We let them know we expect payment on the day of service and ask them to have payment ready. Often they “skip out” on us because we do insides first, they will sometimes just drive off when we are doing the outside and then there is no one home to collect from when we finish. I definitely feel a need to charge those people.
We haven’t fully committed to this concept yet, I’m still looking for ideas.
It’s not been necessary yet for me to mail a bill to a residential customer.
I do, however, give my storefront customers 2 options. They can pay cash or if they want an invoice it’s an additional $2.00. It gives them an incentive to set up cash payments with me instead of billing. Nobody’s ever complained about the $2.00.
Here’s the thing. A measly $2.00 charge on an invoice could cause a customer to steer their business elsewhere. That one customer could have been all set for 2 services per year. This could be a $500 or more loss per year. (That will require 250 extra billing charges to make up for the loss, YIKES!)
Okay, maybe a little too dramatic. 
I’ve been thinking about this all day and have come up with an alternative. You may consider mailed billing to be a pain in time and money but why not turn this into a positive marketing opportunity. Along with the invoice, also stuff in some marketing material or a brochure on all the other services you perform. Extra business cards. A formal request for referrals.
Any communication with a customer, whether written or verbal, is the time to sell, sell, sell.
Nice, I’ll keep that in mind 
