Skip tracing is a paid service using which anyone can find the latest contact information of a person. This includes their present address, employer, phone number, and more. Skip tracing costs vary from $50 to $175 per person.
In short, Skip-tracing is the process of tracking down individuals. Most collection agencies do this for free on all accounts they work on.
Cheaper Option – Use a Collection Agency
Using debt Collection Agencies is a much cheaper option (almost a steal). For approximately $15 per account, they will attempt to recover your money and do skip tracing for free.
- Perform skip-tracing on a person to find his latest contact information. Yes, skip tracing is free.
- Send five demand letters to your debtor.
- Verify if the person has filed for bankruptcy or has deceased.
- The debtor pays you directly, with no other cost involved.
Collection agencies buy a bulk subscription from these Skip Tracer Services, so their cost of locating a debtor is a fraction of what it would cost you to find a single debtor. They buy thousands of accounts at a time and keep using them gradually.
CAUTION: Skip tracing can often yield inaccurate or outdated information, particularly with phone numbers and email addresses, so collectors should rely on this data with caution.
Who uses Skip Tracing?
Deb collectors, process servers, private investigators, bail bondsmen, repossession agents, and even journalists use skip tracing to locate a person who has ‘skipped’ out on their obligations. It can be a legal, ethical method to locate individuals when conducted within the bounds of privacy laws and regulations.
What information is revealed with Skip Tracing?
The information gathered from skip tracing can vary but typically might include:
- Current and Past Addresses: One of the primary pieces of information gathered in skip tracing is a person’s current and past addresses. This can help to create a picture of a person’s movements and potentially lead to their current location.
- Phone Numbers: This can include both landline and cell phone numbers. Phone numbers can be a direct way to contact the person or may provide information about their location.
- Email Addresses: Email can be another way to contact the person directly or to find more information about them.
- Employment History: Information about a person’s current and past employers can also be useful in locating them.
- Relatives and Associates: Information about a person’s relatives, friends, or other associates can be very valuable. These individuals might know where the person is, or they might inadvertently provide clues about the person’s location.
- Business Associations: If a person owns or is involved with a business, that information can also be useful in locating them.
- Social Media Profiles: Social media can provide a wealth of information, from a person’s current location to their habits, friends, and interests.
- Vehicle Registrations: If a person owns a vehicle, the registration information can provide clues about their location.
- Property Records: Records of property ownership can also provide clues about a person’s location.
The exact information a skip tracer can access and how they can use it varies depending on the laws in their location.
Where to Skip Trace Yourself
Here are a few services if you want to do the skip tracing yourself. They range from $50 to $175 per account.
1.) Accurint by LexisNexis www.accurint.com/collections.html
2.) TLOxp by TransUnion www.transunion.com/product/tloxp
3.) First Search By Equifax: www.equifax.com/business/firstsearch/
4.) IDI Data ididata.com/skip-tracing/
5.) MicroBilt Skip Tracing www.microbilt.com/product/skip-tracing
Need for Skip Tracing in Debt Collection
What if you send a bill to your customer/patient/debtor that comes back as non-deliverable, or if you try to contact them on the phone number listed in your records, but it no longer works? Suddenly your installments appear to be non-collectible.
The biggest mistake that most creditors make is to keep an unpaid account aside for weeks, thinking about what to do about it, even though their own repeated attempts to contact the debtor have consistently failed. Waiting on this account any longer means you are letting this delinquent account become older, drastically lowering the chances of recovering money from this account.
What is Skip Tracing or “Skip” Status?
In the collections industry, a debtor whose contact information has changed or if the address/phone provided by the creditor is no longer valid, then the account is categorized in “Skip” status. It requires to be skip traced. They do not charge anything extra to their clients for it.
If the debtor is unreachable, what will a Collection Agency do?
For collection agencies, “Skip” status or a “Missing debtor” is a fairly common situation. An experienced collection agency has many tools and tricks to find the debtor’s latest contact information.
Most common reasons why debtors are unreachable:
1. Unreachable landline number: Many people are ditching their landlines for cell phones. In such cases, the debtor may intend to pay, but he did not realize that the creditor needs to be informed about his phone number change. Leaving you to do all the detective work.
2. The debtor has relocated: This could be because of a job change, divorce, retirement, health issues or other genuine relocation reasons. The debtor is surprised when contacted on his new address or phone number, but his intention is not to go into hiding or not to pay.
3. Intentionally hiding: This could be because the debtor is in some legal trouble or hiding from the police or even from his family members. Maybe the debtor has to pay money to other creditors like you and decided to go into hiding. Regardless, such debtors are the hardest to locate and even harder to collect money from. They might have given you the wrong information about themselves while buying your product or service. In the worst circumstances, it might also be a case of identity theft. These kinds of cases need to be handled very carefully.
Letting a collection agency handle Skip Tracing and Collections is a cost-effective solution:
There are many Skip tracing techniques. But creditors (or companies) have to shell out money to purchase access to this information. Therefore it is better to hire a collection agency that already has access as part of their services. Skip tracers should comply with federal and state laws controlling access to public records.
Collection agencies are super-efficient. Factor in the time, stress, and energy you or your staff will put into these efforts. Is your staff even trained for such detective work? Plus, add the cost of those staff hours of your employees that they spend on this task (their salary, office space, insurance, etc.). Therefore assigning this account to a collection agency almost always turns out to be a much cheaper and an efficient option.
Skip tracing has always been an important part of the debt collection process. Collection agencies can quickly access public and proprietary data from thousands of proven sources by using paid skip-tracing services. Although there is no guarantee that a collection agency, even with all its resources and tricks, will certainly be able to locate the debtor, the chances are far better than what your untrained in-house employees would do. Some individuals confuse skip tracing with USPS change of address check. Both are different.
Other interesting information
Sometimes, the skip tracing process reveals additional information like – If the debtor has declared bankruptcy, has deceased, is in active military duty ( if so, different rules apply), or if the person is known to file lawsuits against the debt collectors or creditors. These reasons will likely discourage a collection agency from performing debt recovery efforts.
It is possible that the debtor was not found during the first round of Skip Tracing, but with advancements in technology, it is now possible for Skip Tracers to report once there is a hit later. This automatic process is called “triggering”.
Most Common Skip-Tracing Services
The USPS provides basic skip tracing. A popular skip tracing service is “Accurint for Collections” by LexisNexis. Skip tracing services provided by major credit bureaus are also extremely popular. TransUnion’s TLOxp, Experian’s MetroNet, and FirstSearch and Finders by Equifax are other popular skip tracing services.
Video: What is skip tracing?