You are the audit manager in charge of the audit of THI Ltd. One of the audit juniors was responsible for the audit of debtors and has filed the following comments on the audit approach taken.

(a) ‘A great deal of time was saved by asking the company’s staff to type out the confirmation requests and post them straight to the debtors. This appears to have had a dramatic effect on the response rate, over 80 per cent and hardly a disagreement!’

(b) ‘The company’s chief accountant did not want me to pester two of the largest customers because their balances were in dispute. Rather than risk provoking these debtors, they were removed from the sample and replaced with two other balances of a similar size.’

(c) ‘Six of the responses to the confirmation request suggested that the company’s balances had been overstated. A brief review of the company’s records showed that these problems were almost certainly due to timing errors and so no further action was taken.’

List the shortcomings of the junior’s work on debtors.