Social media and collecting on overdue invoices

[Salma]

Hello all,
I was just wondering if anyone has ever used social media (facebook, twitter, etc. or even the sites where you can rate and review businesses) when trying to collect on overdue invoices?
We all use this site to obtain valuable information about the good and bad carriers and brokers. What about when we are chasing some company for non-payment for months on end without success?
Many companies may not have official facebook or twitter accounts but you can usually find personal accounts for the owners or employees.

I'm interested to know if the members here think this a useful tool or just a waste of time and energy.

 

[lowmiler88]

I honestly believe if they haven't paid because they are crooks it is not going to matter what you post anywhere and if they truly did their best and went bankrupt well you wouldn't want to kick them again because they probably lost everything.

 

[LADYCHAMPAGNE]

I have used Facebook account of family members when chasing a customer that stiffed me for $50 000. It worked great to figure out he had left the country and went to Florida

 

[Freight Broker]

I had a carrier who stiffed me for $4000.00 awhile back. He was under one of my loads when he broke down, and to get him going again I wired him 4K for repairs . He promised up and down that he would pay me back, but several years later he went incommunicato.. I checked his Facebook page on which he was the "big trucker" with a growing fleet of rigs and money flowing in. He also had some posts about "crooked brokers" which i found amusing. Although I wasn't his "Facebook friend" I was able to shame him on his page. Small consolation though.. never did get paid and Mr. big rig money bags went belly up not long after.

 

[KeyFactor]

If only we could pay our mortgages with these moral victories....

 

[Freight Broker]

Moral victories are pretty much worthless I've come to learn. best to bite the bullet and just move on.

 

[AccountsReceivable@DRC]

Salma,

If the delinquent legitimately closed due to a bankruptcy then not much you can do and as previously noted - why bother with the 2nd unnecessary 'kick' to an already unfortunate situation.

But if a delinquent is on social media and everything seems 'business as usual' with your invoices still unpaid then I would definitely use whatever tools I could to apply that collection pressure. I've contacted Associations and other affiliations of a delinquent and advised them of certain members unethical business practices. It's been a long time since I've had to go that route and dig the trenches to recover monies. You've got to do what you can with any tidbit of information available to you whether it be just from a plain ol' google search or social media platform.