Are you a creditor or business owner that has found that clients skip town or change their personal information to avoid paying their debts and you are looking for good skip tracing?
If so, you are probably feeling quite stressed about the whole ordeal and may even be severely financially affected by the lack of payments.
After all, you would have provided someone with your product, service, or maybe even actual money in exchange for them owing you a certain amount of money over time, just for this money to not be paid!
This can be quite devastating for many businesses as they may be missing out on a lot of potentially much-needed money.
However, what are you to do if a client is avoiding their debt? Good skip tracing is what!
In this article our skip tracing professionals will discuss the importance of a good skip-tracing system for a debt collecting business and some strategies and techniques to make this process more effective.
Good Skip Tracing - Conduct Some Research
The first strategy that you can use in your business to improve upon your skip-tracing process is to conduct some initial research on the client.
When you are skip tracing in debt collection, information is key.
In case you aren’t aware, skip tracing is the process of using databases and information about a client to locate them if they have changed details about them that means you cannot find them.
Information is, therefore, an extremely important element in doing so is information, as the more you have, the better.
To get this information, there are several things that you can do.
For starters, go through any and all of your files and conversations recorded about this client.
You may have missed something in the past that can help you now.
You should also run their name through the internet to find any relevant information that you can use.
Good Skip Tracing - Use social media
Another great strategy that you can use within your company to improve your skip tracing process is to use social media.
Modern society is practically built on social media. There is so much that you can discover about a person by simply looking into them online.
People tend to document a lot about their lives on social media, whether they mean to or not.
The information that they have shared on their social media accounts can help you to locate them if they have tried to flee from their debts!
You can simply search their name on sites such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Twitter to see if they have an account that has any information beneficial to your search on it!
Contact Recorded Associates
Another great technique that you can use to locate a client that doesn’t want to be found is by contacting anyone that you know to be associated with this person.
Does your client have a boss at work that you are aware of? Or maybe a landlord?
If so, these people may be able to provide you with some incite as to where your client is located.
Whether or not this person is currently associated with this person does not necessarily matter as they still may have provided them with an idea as to where they are going!
This person may or may not be willing to inform you of such information, however, but it is definitely worth a shot.
Good Skip Tracing - Follow the Rules
Another important element of ensuring that your good skip tracing process is as effective as possible is making sure that you are always following the rules surrounding it.
You see, when skip-tracing rules are not followed it can border upon or even become stalking, which is an incredibly illegal act!
You should make sure that all of your skip tracings are legal and above board so that you do not face any legal trouble.
If you are charged with stalking, you may have to pay more than the debt was ever worth in a fine or even serve some jail time!
Not only will this render your “skip tracing” ineffective, but it will tarnish your reputation, both professional and personal, and result in some serious legal consequences.
Good Skip Tracing - Use Public Databases
Another great strategy that you can use to improve your good skip tracing methods is by utilising the availability of public databases.
When creditors or business owners are looking for a missing client to recover a debt, it can be easy to give up after a couple of phone calls and maybe an ask around.
However, while these steps can be effective, there is much more to skip tracing than some idle looking around.
Instead, you should be using the resources that are public databases to your advantage!
Public databases can include criminal records, renting records, and employment records.
All of these things can be essentials to people’s lives or be significant event that is noted, meaning it is something that you may be able to use to find a missing person!
Check with Utilities Companies and Providers
Another strategy that you can use to improve your skip tracing efforts is checking someone’s name with the utility services.
Everyone needs utilities to live.
Whether it be for storing their food, keeping up with their hygiene, or simply the basic necessity of making food and drinking water, utilities will likely be used by everyone at some point in the day.
This means that there is a great likelihood that their name will be down for a utility service of some sort, which you can use to your advantage!
Good Skip Tracing - Don’t Give Up
Another great strategy that you can use to improve upon your business's skip-tracing process is simply persisting and not giving up.
As we spoke about earlier, good skip tracing can take a while, be a challenge, and it is not uncommon for people to simply give up.
However, you should not be one of these people.
Giving up decreases your likelihood of finding this person to near 0% and will mean that you will lose any of the money that they would have had to pay in debts!
Hire a Debt Collector
Have you tried to improve your skip-tracing methods, but still find that you are unable to locate missing debtors?
If so, it may be time for you to hire a debt collector to do this work for you.
Debt collectors will generally subscribe to extra resources for good skip tracing or can, at the very least, skip trace with more experience and professionalism than you may know how.
They can be very effective in locating your missing person and bringing them to justice in the form of recovering your debt from them.
Consider debt collection today and submit your debt online!
Advance debt collection is an Australia-wide commercial debt collection agency and credit and accounts receivable management. We can recovery your debts, conduct skip tracing, and manage your accounts receivable. We collect your debts for commission only. This means no collection, no commission. We are professional debt collectors with combined 20 years of experience to help you collect your debts. We are partnered with expert litigation lawyers with years of experience in debt recovery, enforcement, and insolvency. Under the Agents Financial Administration Act 2014 Advance Debt Collection Pty Ltd hold authority number 4583821 to act as a debt collector. ADC Advance Debt Collection® is a registered trademark.
