Alternative · Migration guide

Alternative to using a collection agency — Syntharra

If you are searching for an alternative to a collection agency, you have usually already had the bad experience: the 30 to 50 percent contingency cut, the customer relationship damaged, the small invoices the agency would not take. The good news is most invoices that end up at an agency did not have to.

Why people search for an alternative

  • Contingency fees of 30 to 50 percent are standard. On a $5,000 invoice, the agency keeps $1,500 to $2,500 of the recovery.
  • Most agencies decline invoices under $500 to $1,000 — the math does not work for them. So the small invoices just stay unpaid.
  • Customer relationships rarely survive an agency referral. Even when the agency recovers, the customer almost never comes back.
  • FDCPA compliance is the agency's problem on third-party calls, but their collection scripts tend to be more aggressive than what works for first-party SMB relationships.
  • You lose visibility into the calls. The agency reports outcomes; you do not hear the conversations or learn anything about your customers from them.

What Syntharra replaces — and what it does not

Syntharra is first-party — your business is the one calling, not a third-party collector. Pricing is 10 percent of recovered amount (versus 30 to 50 percent for an agency). We work invoices of any size; there is no minimum threshold. The customer relationship stays intact because the call comes from your business, not a debt collector. Compliance is TCPA-safe and FDCPA-restrained because we are calling on behalf of you, not as a debt collector against the customer.

Migration checkpoints

  1. If you are currently mid-engagement with an agency on specific accounts, those usually have to play out — agencies typically have exclusive-engagement terms during the active period.
  2. For new past-due invoices, route through Syntharra at day 3 past due instead of waiting until day 90 to send to an agency.
  3. Confirm Stripe Connect setup — Syntharra never holds funds, payments flow direct to your account.
  4. The agency option remains available later for accounts that do not recover after Syntharra's 3 call attempts. The two are layered, not either-or.

What you keep

Agencies remain the right call for accounts that have already been first-party-worked, are above the agency's minimum, are non-disputed, and where the relationship is already lost. Syntharra does not replace that. We replace the situations where agency referral is too early or the invoice is too small for them to bother with — the early-stage and small-invoice cases that agencies discard.

Most invoices that go to agencies did not have to. Run the first-party layer first.

Connect your books

Compare side-by-side instead? See Syntharra vs a collection agency