Banking Law

Are All Debt Collectors Nasty?

By Kurt O'Keefe, Detroit Consumer Law Attorney

I have always said that natural selection worked in such a way that all the nice people ended up in sales and all the nasty people ended up in collections.

Now I find, as occasionally happens, that I am wrong!

Well, not completely.

Nice looking people, young females, of course, are being used by some of the nasty people, known as skip tracers, in the latest collection agency trick.

A skip tracer is someone who tries to find people who have, in the eyes of those who hired them, skipped.

That is, no forwarding address, left the job they had, and so on.  So, someone, often a creditor, has no way to update their records, when the bills come back in the mail, and the phone call to the employer comes up empty.

So, say someone who forgot about a bill,  maybe does not even owe it, creditor records screwed up somewhere, past the statute of limitations, already discharged in bankruptcy, thought the ex-spouse paid it after the divorce, whatever.

This person may be on Facebook.

Hey, how much does it cost to set up a Facebook page?  Zip, zilch, nada, nothing.

So, innocent victim(consumer view) / deadbeat (collection industry view) gets a Friend invite from lovely young blonde.

Let us assume the target is a male.

Friend invite is accepted, and, collection agency now has contact information and can resume harassing the target.

I guess we have to give them credit for imagination, if nothing else.

This practice does NOT violate any law I know about.

So, be wary of those Facebook friend invites!

Full post as published by Debt Law Network on May 24, 2009 (boomark / email).