Your customer wants compensation for lost business.
Test a lost-income demand against the claimed cause, calculation and steps taken to reduce the loss.
Corporate Recovery Partners
01 / 06
A shutdown claim arrives with your unpaid invoice
A refrigeration contractor receives a demand after a café closes for repairs. The owner claims an entire week of takings, even though the equipment was unavailable for two days. The contractor needs to investigate the complaint without accepting that every dollar on the spreadsheet was caused by its work.
Request the date of failure, the operational impact, the repair timeline and the evidence connecting the alleged fault to the closure. Identify any other work or supply problem occurring at the same time.
A timeline helps separate the period actually affected from a broader difficult trading week. Preserve your service records and any operating instructions given to the customer.
The ACCC says compensation under consumer guarantees concerns loss caused by the failure and reasonably foreseeable consequences. An adviser must first establish whether that regime applies to this transaction.
Contractual claims may raise different questions about responsibility and limits. Avoid telling the customer that lost business is always excluded, or accepting that a complaint automatically establishes liability.
Ask how the customer calculated the amount and which records support it. Gross sales, actual lost profit and extra operating expenses describe different things and should not be combined without explanation.
Check whether postponed orders were later fulfilled, whether costs were saved during the closure, and whether the same expense appears twice. These are questions for evidence and accounting review, not automatic deductions.
Record whether temporary equipment, a partial reopening or another practical workaround was considered. Ask why an alternative was unsuitable rather than assuming it would have prevented every loss.
Notify an insurer or broker promptly if cover might respond, and obtain advice before admitting liability or agreeing payment. A factual acknowledgement can keep communication open while the claim is assessed.
