When a customer disappears with your udhaar

He has stopped answering. Before you decide anything, separate two different men: the one who is avoiding you and the one who has actually moved. The first almost always pays. The second rarely does. Then set a date by which you will stop spending your evenings on it, and keep that date.

Is he avoiding you, or has he actually gone?

These are two different problems with two different answers, so an hour spent finding out which one you have is the best hour you will spend on it.

A man who is avoiding you is still here. His shop opens most mornings, his children go to the same school, somebody on your street saw him on Tuesday. He is not answering because he cannot pay today and the call embarrasses him. This man usually pays within a few months. The only thing that reliably loses him is your temper.

A man who has gone has moved house or moved city. The room is locked, the number is dead, the neighbour says he left after Eid and nobody has an address. That is a different situation, and treating it like the first one costs you three months of evenings.

So ask before you act. Ask the shopkeeper next to his place. Ask two customers who know him. Walk past his door once in daylight. Twenty minutes of asking tells you more than fifty missed calls, and it decides everything that comes after.

The first two weeks decide most of it

The first two weeks, in the order that works

1. 1Ask three people who see himThe shop next to his, two customers who know him. Twenty minutes of asking beats fifty missed calls.
2. 2Send one message that names the amountEasy to answer, impossible to argue with. Ask for a date, not for the money.
3. 3Write down what he said and what he didTwo broken dates in writing tell you honestly that this is no longer a delay.
4. 4Visit once, in daylight, aloneA calm daytime visit settles most of these. An evening crowd never has.
5. 5Call the guarantor before week threeAsk him where the man is, not for his money. He will usually chase harder than you can.

Nearly every balance that is finally lost was lost quietly in the first month, when nobody did anything because it felt too early to worry.

Two things matter in those two weeks. The first is that you make contact in a way that is easy to answer. A short written message that names the amount gets a reply far more often than a call at nine at night. "Adnan, your balance is Rs 7,400. Give me a date that suits you." A man who has no money today can still answer that sentence. He cannot answer "where is my money".

The second is that you write down what happened. The date you asked, the date he promised, whether he came. Not to take anywhere, but because in four months you will not remember, and a record that reads "said the fifteenth, did not come, said the thirtieth, did not come" is what tells you honestly that this is no longer a delay. Everything that works when you are collecting an ordinary late balance still works here, and it works better while the trail is warm.

One more thing about those two weeks: keep it quiet. The moment you complain about him in front of other customers, he stops being a man with a problem and becomes a man defending his name in his own street. He will avoid you harder, and everybody listening quietly notes what you would say about them.

Calling the guarantor without losing him too

If somebody stood for this balance, this is the moment that person exists for, and how you make the call decides whether it works.

Call him yourself. Not through a cousin, not through a message somebody passes on. Say the amount, say plainly what has happened, and ask him for help finding the man rather than asking him for money. "Rizwan, Adnan owes me Rs 7,400 and I cannot reach him. Do you know where he has moved?" You will often have an address inside a minute.

A guarantor treated as an ally chases harder than you ever could, because it is his own name sitting in the middle of it. A guarantor treated as a debtor on the first call stops answering too, and then you have lost two men instead of one. Ask for money only after he has genuinely stopped trying to help, and even then say it once, calmly, and in private.

If nobody stood for this balance, that is the real lesson of the whole episode, and it is worth more than the money. The guarantor question is easy to ask on the day a large amount goes out and impossible to ask four months later.

Count what the chase is already costing you

Say: four months of chasing one balance

The balance he owes youRs 7,400

Evenings closed early to go and look for him9

What the counter usually earns in those hoursRs 5,400

Fare and phone across four monthsRs 900

Recovered so farRs 1,000

So the chase itself has cost youRs 6,300

Example numbers, not a survey. Put your own evenings in and see what your chase is actually costing.

Time is the part shopkeepers leave out of the sum, and it is usually the largest number in it.

Nine evenings closed early is not nothing. It is nine evenings of takings you did not have, plus fares, plus phone, plus the mood you carried home each of those nights. Put those in and a Rs 7,400 balance has often already cost you more than Rs 7,400, and it is still not paid.

This is not an argument for giving up quickly. It is an argument for knowing the number, because a shopkeeper who has never worked it out will chase a small balance for a year on principle while the shop quietly pays for the principle.

The day you decide to stop

Decide the date in advance, on a calm morning, and write it next to his name. Four months is a reasonable line for most balances. Six is generous. A year is your shop paying for your pride.

When that date arrives, do one last thing properly and then stop. Send one final message, short and without heat: the amount, the fact that you are leaving it open, and that the shop is here whenever he wants to clear it. Then stop calling, stop the trips, stop thinking about it at closing time.

Two things happen after that, and both are better than the year you were about to spend. Some of these men come back on their own, a year or two later, usually because they need the shop again and the balance is in the way. Others never come back, and the money is gone whether you spend your evenings on it or not.

What you must not do is turn it into a public matter. Standing outside a house, involving people who have nothing to do with it, or saying things you cannot take back will not produce Rs 7,400. It will produce a story about you that reaches every customer on your street, including the ones who pay you on time.

Close it in your record, and let it change one rule

Do not erase the page. A name you delete is a name you will greet warmly in two years without remembering why the shop lost money that summer.

Leave the balance where it is, mark it clearly as stopped, and keep the history. Wasoolo keeps a customer's page and every entry on it even after you close the matter, and none of it is lost with the phone if the phone is, which is a separate habit worth having whatever happens with this man.

Then let the loss buy you one rule. Not five, one, because five rules made in anger are gone by next month.

Before the next large balance goes out of your shop

• You can name the street he lives on, not only the area
• You know where he works or where his own shop is
• One person you both know has agreed to stand for it
• An amount and a date were said out loud, and written the same day
• He has cleared a smaller balance with you at least twice
• Losing the whole amount would not stop you paying a supplier

For most shops the useful rule is the address, or the guarantor, or the ceiling: never let one name stand higher than a number you fixed in advance. Whichever of the three would have stopped this particular loss is the one to keep. If you have never fixed that ceiling, decide it now while the cost of not having one is still fresh.

The last thing worth saying is the thing nobody says out loud. One man disappearing does not mean your judgement is bad. Every shop that gives credit loses something eventually. What separates a shop that survives it from one that does not is only this: the loss was a size the shop could carry, and it changed one rule on the way out.

Common questions

How long should I chase before I accept the money is gone?

Decide the length before you start, and four months suits most balances. What matters is that the date is set on a calm morning and written next to his name, not decided in a bad moment. Chasing with no stopping line is how a Rs 7,000 balance quietly costs a shop Rs 20,000 in closed evenings and still does not come back.

The guarantor says he is not responsible. Now what?

Practically, ask him for help reaching the man rather than for the money, because that is the request he can say yes to. Most guarantors who refuse to pay will still chase the man hard, since his own name is in it. Push for money on the first call and you lose that help as well. What the paper obliges him to do varies, and a counter is not the place to argue it.

Should I tell other shopkeepers about him?

Warning one or two shopkeepers you actually deal with is normal trade. Making it a street matter is not, and it turns a money problem into a fight about a man's name, at which point he can never pay you without losing face. Keep it factual, keep it private, and never say anything you could not repeat in front of him.

He is back after two years and wants to buy again. Do I serve him?

Serve him for cash, warmly, with no speech about the past. If he clears the old balance, take it as a gift and say thank you. Credit again only after he has cleared the old amount and paid cash for a while. The mistake is not serving him. The mistake is giving him a fresh balance because the greeting was friendly.

Can I add something on top for all the months he made me wait?

No. Never add anything for a payment being late. There is no late fee, no penalty and nothing charged for waiting, because anything tied to lateness turns money into an argument about fairness, and that argument is the one thing that guarantees you are never paid. The amount he owes is the amount he owes.

How do I stop this happening again without refusing everybody?

You do not need to refuse anybody. You need three things at the moment a large amount goes out: an address you could actually reach, a person who stands for it, and a ceiling per name that you fixed in advance. Almost every disappearance is a name that had none of the three, agreed at six in the evening with four people waiting.