Dun and Bradsdtreet works well for larger companies but for smaller companies, like most forklift dealers, they are far from accurate because most small companies don't give them any information so they rely on only public information and then they "guess" at the missing pieces.
We have dealt with some huge companies that pay terribly. Why, because they know they can and still get vendors to sell to them They figure- who wouldn't want their business. It has no negative effect because they know everybody will give them automatic credit and their bad payment histoiry has no negative consequences as far as they are concerned.
My initial point was that I have read alot in these forums about this and that company doing bad or going down and my question is how would you know.
At the beginning of our current economic mess when large banks and institutions were failing I heard a reporter say about other healthy banks that as long as your company's name comes up in the news that it may have difficulties, then just by mentioning the companies name it would probably fail no matter how healthy it was.
So talk about integrity.. If it's a rumor then it should be prefaced that as such and not announce it as a statement of fact.