Unpaid services: why the number of legal cases is set to rise in 2025

2025 was the year of legal disputes: here’s why

There is a problem that every business owner in the services sector knows all too well, but often struggles to admit openly: customers complain. And they are doing so more and more. In 2025, disputes between service companies, cleaning, maintenance, security, installations, and their clients reached levels not seen for years. This is no coincidence, nor is it a question of the quality of the work: at the root of it lies something more structural, and ignoring it comes at a high cost.

According to data collected by several Italian trade associations and confirmed by European studies on the B2B sector, in 2024 at least 23% of field service companies with fewer than 50 employees faced at least one formal complaint that led to a refund, a forced discount or, in the worst cases, legal action. A figure that is set to rise further in 2025, partly due to an increasingly challenging regulatory and contractual environment.

Why disputes are on the rise: the structural causes

To understand this phenomenon, it is not enough to look at the figures: we need to analyse the root causes. Three main ones emerge.

1. Contracts have become more precise, but their execution remains vague. Large companies and public sector organisations that commission services today demand detailed specifications, SLAs defined down to the minute, and continuous reporting. But most of the companies providing these services still work in traditional ways: paper documents, phone calls, WhatsApp. The result is an ever-widening gap between what the contract stipulates and what the company can demonstrate it has actually done.

2. A culture of evidence has taken hold among clients. Thanks to digitalisation, clients are increasingly accustomed to demanding concrete evidence. They have got their software, logistics and IT suppliers used to providing logs, reports and traceability. Now they expect the same from on-site services. And when they do not receive evidence, interpretations diverge.

3. SMEs lack adequate tools to document work carried out on site. It is not that the work is not being done: the problem is that it is not being tracked in a verifiable manner. A cleaner signing a paper sheet, a maintenance technician sending a confirmation text message, a security guard noting the time by hand: none of this is worth anything if it ends up in court.

The real cost of disputes: far beyond the refund

When it comes to disputes, business owners immediately think of the direct cost: the discount granted, the invoice reversed, the refund paid. But the real costs are much higher and often hidden. There is the time wasted gathering evidence after the fact, hours spent searching through documents, emails and messages. There are legal costs, even just for a letter from a solicitor. There is reputational damage, which is extremely difficult to quantify but devastating for businesses that rely on references and word of mouth.

An analysis by a Milan-based law firm specialising in commercial law has estimated that every formal dispute, even those settled out of court, costs a business an average of between €2,000 and €5,000 in direct and indirect costs. For an SME with tight margins, even a single dispute a year can wipe out the profit from an entire contract.

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The most common complaint: “the service was not carried out”

The most frequent complaint that service companies face does not concern the quality of the work, but its actual performance. “Your operator didn’t turn up.” “Thursday’s cleaning wasn’t done.” "The technician didn’t turn up." In most cases, the work has actually been done. But without verifiable proof, geolocation, timestamps, digital signatures, it is the worker’s word against the customer’s.

And in negotiations, or worse still in court, whoever has the proof wins. Those who don’t usually give in. Not out of weakness, but out of pragmatism: defending oneself without proof costs more than the case is worth.

The solution is not to hire another lawyer

Many business owners react to these situations by strengthening their legal or sales teams. But the problem isn’t downstream: it’s upstream. There is only one structural solution: making every job automatically documentable, verifiable and irrefutable. Not a signature sheet, not an email: a system that records arrival time, GPS location, work carried out and departure time, with a legally valid digital signature from the operator.

Businesses that have already adopted tools of this kind report a rapid transformation: disputes are halved within a few months, simply because customers know that every job is tracked. The deterrent effect works even before any evidence is required.

If you want to understand how this approach works in practice, discover how GeoTapp turns every job into verifiable evidence. Companies using it no longer fear disputes: they resolve them in minutes, with a document that speaks for itself.