Collection agency, or file the claim? Two different roads

What a collection agency actually does

An agency works the debtor: calls, letters, pressure, negotiation, sometimes a lawyer's letter behind it. Its fee is a percentage of recovery — 15 to 40 percent across the industry — paid only if money comes back. On a $2,000 claim that is $300 to $800; on $10,000, $1,500 to $4,000. Where the broker is alive, answering, and simply slow or slippery, a good agency's pressure can be the right tool — that is the honest case for it, and there are loads where we would tell you exactly that. Where the broker is collapsing, pressure has nothing to press: the money is not in his operating account, it is in the bond, and the bond does not take phone calls.

What the bond claim actually does

The claim presents your papers to the surety that held the broker's bond on your delivery date, under that bond's rules and windows. The surety investigates and pays valid claims from the $75,000 pot — shared if claims pass the pot, as the $75,000 guide explains. The broker's mood, cash flow and phone manners are mostly beside the point; the paperwork is the point. The road costs nothing but hours by hand — the complete free path is in the filing guide — or a flat $79 / $129 / $189 to have it built and filed for you. Nobody takes a percentage of your recovery on this road, ever.

The honest comparison

• Broker alive and dodging? Agency pressure or your own written ladder has real value. The claim still belongs on file — it is cheap insurance against the dodge becoming a collapse.
• Broker gone quiet, bond cancelled, or other carriers unpaid? The claim is the road; the window is 60 days and agencies do not stop it closing.
• Amount small? A percentage of a small claim is small too — but so is the agency's interest in working it. The flat $79 band exists because small claims deserve a complete file as much as big ones.
• Risk shape, stated plainly: an agency's fee is only paid from a recovery; a filing fee is paid for the filing whether the surety pays or not. The fee buys the filing — prepared right, filed on time. It never buys a recovery.

And the third road, for completeness

Court. Federal law gives 18 months from delivery to sue on the claim. For a live broker with assets and a debt worth a lawyer's hour, that road is real — and it is a lawyer's road, not ours and not an agency's. Nothing in this guide is legal advice; it is a map of who does what, drawn so you can choose with your eyes open.

Questions people ask

Can I do both — agency and claim?

Carriers do. Keep each side told about the other: if the broker pays the agency while your claim sits with the surety, the surety must hear it from you at once. Double recovery is not a strategy; it is a problem you would have to hand back.

An agency says it can 'get the bond paid fast.' True?

Nobody can hurry a surety's investigation or jump a shared pool — being in the pool, inside the windows, complete, is the whole of what 'fast' honestly means. Treat a promise of more as a sales line, whoever says it.