Winning at the Disputes Tribunal is the cheap part of getting paid

Katrina Gosney did everything right. She hired a tradesman, documented the botched job, took him to the Disputes Tribunal and won. Then the state that issued her order spent the next five months losing it, misdirecting it and mislaying her paperwork. A $965 debt should be a rounding error. Instead it is a case study in how the system makes honest creditors pay twice, once for the original loss and again in time and fees just to collect.

A $360 job that became a five-month saga

Gosney paid Rob Henderson $360 to replace two rotting floorboards in her horse float. He used Oregon softwood instead of the specified hardwood, ran five weeks late and drilled 26 new holes into the chassis that then needed rust treatment. On 10 December 2025, referee Krysia Cowie ordered him to pay $965.50 for the second repair. The tribunal then emailed the order to the wrong address and posted it to a Rolleston business park NZ Post does not deliver to, despite Gosney warning it in advance. Her options, she was told, were to wait for Henderson to “voluntarily comply”, go to the District Court, hire a debt collector or pay a solicitor.

When Henderson finally saw the order, an eight-word rehearing application citing more evidence about the flooring automatically suspended it. He then failed to turn up to the March 2026 hearing on his own application. Cowie reinstated the order in full. Gosney’s verdict was blunt: “What a wonderful time-waste.”

The bailiff application that vanished

On 30 March Gosney paid $267 to have Henderson’s address located and bailiffs sent. Two weeks later her application was “AWOL”. Emails went unanswered. She refiled in May and complained formally. On 22 May, Ministry of Justice Central Registry team manager Katie McCone conceded “technical and administrative errors” meant the application was never received, and moved it to the front of the queue. By then Gosney had spent more than a quarter of the debt on fees alone, before counting her hours. The Minister for Courts has said enforcement should be faster and more affordable. Gosney’s file shows how far it has to go.

This is a pattern, not bad luck

The tribunal is meant to be quicker, cheaper and less formal than a court for claims up to $60,000, yet NBR reports a separate $4,000 boat dispute stuck in similar enforcement limbo. In 2025, RNZ reported Jeremy Neilson’s attempt to recover a $22,000 deposit from a drone company. He won repeatedly, beat a rehearing bid, obtained a District Court order, and still recovered nothing after nearly two years, because the bailiff found a paper company with no assets.

That same report noted the District Courts Rules Committee had recommended giving referees limited enforcement powers so tribunal decisions could be enforced without a separate court step. There is no sign it has happened. Gosney’s experience suggests nothing meaningful has changed.

The state collects its own debts just fine

Compare the energy Wellington applies when it is the creditor. Inland Revenue reported overdue debt of $9.5 billion at 30 September 2025, and in that quarter alone it collected $1.07 billion and ran 22,209 active bank deductions, 35% more than a year earlier. Across 2024-25 it set up 207,000 instalment arrangements covering 527,000 customers.

That is not a criticism of IRD chasing tax. It is evidence the government knows how to build collection machinery that works. It simply has not extended that competence to the citizens and small firms whose disputes it adjudicates.

Sole traders are the hardest to chase

Creditors of companies at least have a blunt instrument: an unpaid judgment debt can ground liquidation proceedings under the Companies Act. Against an individual, that lever disappears, leaving bailiffs, collectors and solicitors, each costing more relative to a small claim. Nor is outsourcing a clean fix. In 2021, Victoria University law researcher Victoria Stace found New Zealand’s debt collectors were not licensed or bound by any industry body, unlike their Australian counterparts.

What tradies and small firms should do now

Treat a tribunal win as a procedural milestone, not a payment. For lower-value work with unfamiliar customers, take deposits, invoice in stages and consider personal guarantees. Check the counterparty is a real entity with assets before extending credit. Price collection risk into the job.

The fix on the government side is cheap and already scoped. Give referees the power to certify and enforce their own monetary orders, and make the registry track applications as reliably as IRD tracks deductions. Until then, the system will keep rewarding debtors who ignore the mail and punishing creditors who play by the rules.

Sources

• Stuff: She won her $965 claim. But then the real battle began (2026-10-31)
• RNZ: Little Justice: One man’s two-year fight to reclaim $22,000 deposit after Disputes Tribunal win (2025-01-14)
• Inland Revenue: Managing overdue tax debt – July to September 2025 (2025-10-01)
• Inland Revenue: Services to manage debt and unfiled returns (Annual Report 2025) (2025-01-01)
• interest.co.nz: How to get civil judgments and other debts enforced