I called Baycorp. They told me they can take on a debt for a client based in Australia.
$50 + GST to join as a new client. $10 + GST to load a new debt. However, because the debt is considered to be incurred in NZ (where the work was undertaken) any default judgement against a credit rating will also only incur in New Zealand. Given my client lives in Australia that's really only going to negatively affect her if she moves to New Zealand and wants to get credit here. Likewise if I take her to small claims court the Baycorp person said that would be done in New Zealand but enforcing the judgement would be very difficult and costly - requiring legal action in Australia. So really she can ignore it all and it pretty much doesn't affect her. The one thing that Baycorp can do is harass her. They can call her, write letters etc for up to 6 years. However, while they say they will do that I expect they'll actually only make calls, write letters etc for as long as they think there's any chance they'll get their 30% cut. It also wasn't made clear whether calls / letters etc are an additional cost on top of the 30% or included. So I'll weight it up for a day or two and decide if it's worth it. My client is definitely a stress ball so having debt collectors call up frequently might be enough to stir up some sort of settlement. I'll also still give the NSW small claims court a call directly and double-check directly whether a claim can be made there. Any additional comments / thoughts are welcome. -- NZ PHP Users Group: http://groups.google.com/group/nzphpug To post, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected]
