Facebook Warns Bill Collectors
Facebook® Policy Says A Bill Collector
Can Not Use It’s Site To Get People
To Contact Them To Acknowledge A Debt
A Florida bill collector recently contacted a St Petersburg woman’s Facebook® friends in an effort to get them to tell her to call the bill collector to acknowledge an alleged outstanding $362 car loan debt. The woman, Melanie Beacham, didn’t like the fact that the bill collector, MarkOne Financial, embarrassed her in front of her facebook friends so she sued the bill collector.
According to the bill collector lawsuit filing, a MarkOne employee going by the name Jeff Happenstance contacted both the woman and two of her friends on her Facebook® page. As you can see in the message above, Happenstance asked the friends to have Beacham contact him without making reference to her debt.
As we have previously pointed out in our article, “Social Networking Sites Are Bill Collectors #1 Tool”, bill collectors use facebook®, twitter® and Linkedln® as a tool to find people who owe money. Now we learn from reading about this lawsuit that bill collectors also use social networking sites to communicate with a debtor who they are unable to reach by telephone.
A Bill Collector Used To Only Use The Telephone To Harass You
If you have ever been in debt you know that a bill collector not only calls you at your home phone, your cell phone, your employers phone, your relatives phone and even your neighbors phone. That’s right, a bill collector loves calling your neighbors to ask them to leave a message on your door to call them. Why because it works! Sure, it’s illegal for a bill collector to do that but they did it anyway because it works and they get away with it 99.9% of the time.
The main goal of a bill collector is to get you to acknowledge the debt. The best way to accomplish that is to get you mad enough to call them. Why is it so important for them to get you to acknowledge the debt? So they can sue you under what is known as “an account stated” cause of action and not have to prove anything.
Once the bill collector has gotten you to acknowledge the debt they have everything they need to successfully sue you and then use the judgment the court gives them to garnish your wages and empty (levy) your bank accounts. You can read more about this bill collector strategy here.
Now A Bill Collector Uses Facebook Instead of His Telephone To Harass You
Now with Facebook® a bill collector has found a way to contact your friends to get them to ask you to call them to acknowledge the debt. That is more powerful than calling your neighbors to ask them to leave a note on your front door, don’t you agree? Sure it is illegal but I am sure they thought they would get away with it just like they have been doing with the telephone calls to employers, relatives and your neighbors.
Bill Collector Message Left On Facebook Page
The lawsuit has made headlines and Facebook has made various comments to reporters who contacted them about the case. Well it turns out that Facebook does not look kindly on bill collectors who use their site to get people to settle up. Facebook has come out and said that a bill collector who using their service to communicate with a member of their site may be violating Facebook rules.
A spokesperson for the company has stated that there are state and federal laws and FTC regulations that govern the actions of bill collectors. The bill collector in the St. Petersburg case likely violates a number of these laws and regulations and we encourage the victim to contact the FTC and her state Attorney General. In addition they have stated that, Facebook policies prohibit any kind of threatening, intimidating, or hateful contact from one user to another. We encourage people to report such behavior to us. They also recommend that you only accept friend requests from people that you know, and use privacy settings and our blocking feature to prevent unwanted contact.
Facebook Has Helped Topple Governments
And Now We Need To Use Facebook & Twitter
To Topple & STOP Bill Collector Harassment!
Facebook is clearly signaling that they are taking this novel bill collector methodology seriously. And so are we. We at DebtEliminationTools.com want to make sure bill collectors who use social networking sites to harass people in debt to pay for breaking the law are punished. You can help us do that.
Spread The Word About Bill Collector Abuse
To Your Facebook Friends
Facebook will soon become a regular method used by a bill collector to contact you if nothing is done to STOP them. It’s getting the desired result for the bill collector, and that is to start a domino effect of panic and embarrassment among family and friends which in turn gets you to call them.
If you’ve been contacted by a bill collector on Facebook or any other social network site, we’d love to hear your story. Encourage your facebook friends who may have been abused by a bill collector to contact us. Tweat your friends this article.
We want to complile a list of people who have been abused by a bill collector and go after them like the women in Florida did. Make a bill collector pay you for their misuse of social network sites. We have a list of aggressive consumer friendly attorneys who would love to sue each and every bill collector on your behalf and get you a minimum $1,000 cash settlement if not more.
You & your Facebook friends can contact us discreetly by clicking on this Contact Us button. It is time to nip these illegal bill collector tacktics in the bud. Let’s not let a bill collector get away with using social networking sites to harass us any more!
