I have dealt with a client for 25 years successfuly. Without any notice they left by sending in just a letter. The reason that they are leaving is because face to face meetings are not possible as I moved away. I have noticed the new Accountants letterheads are breaking the Law , the Accountants have only just registered at companies house although no company name of individual name is on the letterheads. The client has stopped messaging me about this. Should I tell the client ?
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What do you want to achieve?
Mentioning it will not get your client back and they won’t thank you for it. Just let it go, there are only so many battles you can take on.
...the new Accountants letterheads are breaking the Law , the Accountants have only just registered at companies house although no company name of individual name is on the letterheads.
They may not be breaking the law. Accountant is not a regulated title - anyone, qualified or not can describe themself as such.
Indeed. They may be a sole trader who have recently formed a company with the intention of incorporating, or for name protection (if people still do that).
You had your own very good reasons for moving. A possible consequence was that you might lose the odd client or two. Wave goodbye to them cheerfully, forget them and all who sail in them, and enjoy the (no doubt many) benefits of your new life.
this is nothing more than sour grapes
you have moved away and can't provide a service in the way that the client wants, they are entitled to move on, you should too
I have noticed the new Accountants letterheads are breaking the Law , the Accountants have only just registered at companies house although no company name of individual name is on the letterheads.
I assume that's a typo, and you meant to state no company name or individual name is on the letterhead
If there's no supervising body apparent then you could always check to see whether they're supervised by HMRC at:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/money-laundering-regulations-supervised-busi... "Check if a Business is Registered" and "Report an Unregistered business".
"Sour grapes" is not the right idiom here. It would be if he had perhaps said the client was always a PITA anyway and good riddance etc. (i.e. criticizing something you cannot have but secretly want to have is the correct context as in the original fox & sour grapes fable). I think the term "bad loser" is more apt.
Just give them the handover info and have done with it.
If they are regulated or doing something an Institute would object to (eg using the word "Chartered") then maybe send them an email as a separate matter/for the fun of it.
Other than that, I'm sorry they didn't love you as much as you loved them. So sorry. Move on. Forget about it.
I agree with others - let it go. It's always unpleasant when a client moves on but life is short and it's not worth wasting time over it.
To be fair, it was the OP that moved on - the client just decided not to go with them. Presumably when making that decision to relocate, the OP weighed up the pros and cons and the potential that not all their clients would stay must surely have been on the cons list?
Indeed. The (subtle) point being that the client didn’t even (proactively) change practices. The practice (OP) relocated. That practice isn’t there anymore. It’s shut, and a new one has opened somewhere else.
I suppose the point I’m actually making is that there is an increasing tendency on this forum to think we are the centre of everything and that clients should just fall in line. For example that this client can be serviced remotely so it’s frustrating they left. Well yes they CAN be serviced remotely but evidently they don’t WANT that and therefore they’ve been ‘forced’ away from a relationship they were perfectly happy with for 25 years and may not appreciate the person they previously trusted now picking faults with the firm they’ve chosen in place of that relationship.
Not that I’m accusing the OP of these thoughts or grandeur - hence why I didn’t spell it out in such a way. It also equally applies to those who rather than see themselves as a professional, compare their services to a mobile phone subscription and thus downplay the importance of a trusted advisor.
These are two separate issues.
When you say "the client has stopped messaging me about this" it suggests you've tried to keep a line of communication open but they've made it quite clear (by their silence) that they've left and just want that to be respected. I may be jumping to conclusions of course. Either way, you admit yourself that you can no longer provide the service they require, so why try to string it out?
You've then got a request for handover info from an 'accountant' (whatever that may mean these days) whose business is now presumably far (as in too far to travel) away from your area of operation and as such unless your remaining clients also prefer not to be dealt with remotely you probably aren't going to meet them or have (m)any dealings with them. They may or may not be doing things rightly, but do you really care?
This sounds suspiciously like somebody else's problem (S.E.P), and is a clear and obvious warning of a problem with spacetime and the laws of fictiono-physics as expounded upon by that noted fictiono-physicist Douglas Adams, to whit;
An S.E.P. can run almost indefinitely on a torch or a 9 volt battery, and is able to do so because it utilises a person's natural tendency to ignore things they don't easily accept, like, for example, aliens at a cricket match. Any object around which an S.E.P. is applied will cease to be noticed, because any problems one may have understanding it (and therefore accepting its existence) become Somebody Else's Problem. An object becomes not so much invisible as unnoticed.
A perfect example of this would be a ship covered in an SEP field at a cricket match. A starship taking the appearance of a large pink elephant is ideal because you can see it, yet it is so inconceivable, your mind can't accept it. Therefore it can't exist, thus ignoring it comes naturally.
An S.E.P. can work in much the same way in dangerous or uninhabitable environments. Any problem which may present itself to a person inside an S.E.P. (such as not being able to breathe, due to a lack of atmosphere) will become Somebody Else's Problem.
An S.E.P. can be seen if caught by surprise, or out of the corner of one's eye.