Help With Unpaid Invoices

Unpaid Invoices?

If an agency or an attorney has not paid you for your services and it’s been at least 90 days since the date you submitted your invoice, but not more than a year, please contact us. We can send a demand letter on your behalf and eventually assist you with Small Claims.

AIJIC will help you with non-payment issues if 1) You are an AIJIC member and were a member when you took the job in question or 2) You are not an AIJIC member or were not an AIJIC member when you took the job in question but will prepay a 3-year AIJIC membership to get AIJIC's assistance (contact us for more information). AIJIC reserves the right to request written evidence from you showing that your terms and conditions were clearly defined before you took the job in question, and that you followed up on payment before requesting AIJIC's help. AIJIC will assess requests for assistance on a case-by-case basis and determine its involvement, if any, or if a specific vendor will be added to the list of agencies and attorneys reported to us. Please note that AIJIC will help with no more than two demand letters per member, per year.

Please read about our additional terms and conditions at the bottom of this page.

Success Stories

One of the great benefits of being part of AIJIC is having their support to help you collect from “stubborn” agencies. I contacted AIJIC after almost a year of sending numerous emails and calling the agency demanding payment. I provided the needed info to AIJIC and they created the letter. We received a response within a few days and full payment was sent within a week. Just this service alone is worth the price of the annual membership!

Helena Salvador

Without the strength of AIJIC and its members, I am convinced I never

would have been paid. Thank you SO MUCH for all your continuing hard work!

Nancy Gilmore

I have great news! They sent me the check for the other assignment today! I’m so grateful to AIJIC for your support; the letter you sent did its job. Thank you so much!

Goli Khatibloo

After four months of struggling in order to get paid by an agency, I had the good fortune of contacting AIJIC- immediately after a letter was sent on my behalf, I was paid. Thank you AIJIC for all your help.

Nina Shor

Terms and Conditions

AIJIC no longer intervenes in non-payment issues if the delinquent agency or law firm is on our "blacklist" and the interpreter requesting our help was an AIJIC member when the information was made available to him or her.

If we're helping a member who's owed money, somebody from the AIJIC board will email that member a template for a demand letter that the member will have to fill out with all the pertinent information. Please do not forward us invoices or emails that you've exchanged with the delinquent agency or law firm in question for us to figure out what the facts surrounding your specific situation was.

In the demand letter template, please include all the information about the company that owes you money. A scheduler's email alone is usually not effective. If you know little about the company, please help us by doing the appropriate research. The California Secretary of State's website is a useful resource to obtain information about an established business and the agent for service. We strongly recommend that you ALWAYS know who you're working for before working for a company for the first time.

Please be patient. Getting your demand letter ready to go out entails work that won't be completed overnight or in a matter of days. Rest assured though that the demand letter will be sent out on your behalf with a deadline to pay.

Many of the demand letters we've sent on behalf of our members have been successful, but some of them have been ignored, in which case we've always encouraged our members to sue in Small Claims. Whenever this happens, the only thing that we, AIJIC board members, can do if members indeed wish to sue is provide them with all the information they need to move forward with legal action. AIJIC does not file papers in Small Claims on behalf of members.

Outcomes in court are never guaranteed, but we believe that letting a delinquent company get away with not paying will encourage that company to keep doing it and burning interpreters. Taking someone to court on the other hand sends a powerful message and most often than not, interpreters who were owed money and were brave enough to sue ended up prevailing in court and their fees were reimbursed.