As pointed out in the Wall Street Journal article “Web Site Lets Businesses Expose Deadbeat Customers“, there is a new way to vent your frustrations towards non-paying customers. The website, Uradeadbeat.com, gives you an avenue to post complaints about customers or businesses that owe you money.
I can’t seem to decide where I stand on this idea. On one hand, this may be a good way to get someone to respond to you that normally you could not get into contact with. If they get upset, maybe they will contact you and you will be able to work out some sort of payment schedule. On the other hand, do you really want to have that reputation? That one false move when doing business with you and they could end up plastered on some website labeled as a “deadbeat”. Yikes!
I’d love to hear everyone’s different opinions on this. With the current economic crisis, businesses will be looking to collect on their debts and if desperate, it could get ugly. Would you ever turn to using a website like this to collect on your receivables? Even as a very last resort?
Crazy, huh? It’s a decent idea as long as people do not use it for other purposes. Personal ones like revenge. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes . . .
I think this can be useful. Sometimes you just don’t know where to turn, especially if the person or company that owes you money is not offering any relief to the problem. Plus, it may have the illeged deadbeat think twice about doing it to someone else if they know that they are going to be posted on a site like this.
Hi Amanda
read your post over at SmallBizTrends ( http://smallbiztrends.com )and followed your link. Great site you’ve built, are building. Just thought i’d stop by. Keep it up.
On the deadbeat stuff, i believe it is a bad move for a company to use such a service. Call me old-fashioned on this, but keep your dirty laundry to yourself and collections is one of those things i think you should simply suck up and live with. Publicly shaming someone is not going to get them to pay you. It will just cause them to further despise your brand and now publicly talk about it. Plus, it seems ripe for libel and slander type suits.
I’m sure there will be those that try it. And i see that the Journal comments sound positive, like biz owners will give it a go. Collections is already tricky enough.
I think the problem with this is that people will use it for revenge and spite.
As a small business owner I’ve had my share of those who pay much too slowly — or don’t pay at all. It’s very frustrating. Trust me, I know!
But I also don’t think it is a smart business practice to wear frustration publicly. What does that say about their ability to handle disputes and frustrations professionally and maturely?
In one way, I think it may help a business in the long run if customers know you are a no nonsense company. If you vow to not take crap from other businesses or customers, maybe those deadbeats will choose not to even mess with you. You could end up just getting the quality, paying customers you desire.
Our company has a “black list” of people and companies that haven’t delivered that we paid for or have scammed us totally. We will not send it out to the public, but we could use it for further times, if we want to warn business contacts that could be in the risk zone of getting in contact with these creatures.
I kind of like it. I just checked out the site, and they have many different options on it. I think it could be a useful tool for people to find out what kind of businesses they are dealing with. I think the most important thing is to keep their posts truthful and to the point, not get malicious. I almost feel it would be a business owners duty or consumers for that matter, to warn the public of what kind of poor business practices are going on out there.
I believe this is not a good move. Like Tj, Anita, and others have said, it is uncontrollable that this kind of service will be used to attack a person not the situation itself which is mostly what’s happening these days. Besides, this move will just give your brand a bad publicity which I never would wish to have.
Very lame move for a company to broadcast publicly their frustrations to certain people who owe them these receivables.
Why not? Everyone goes through hardship and mt heart goes out to them. But there are just bad businesses and consumers out there. This seems like a good way to not only expose true deadbeats, but warn both the consumer and business of who to look out for when doing business. It just needs to be done in a truthful and factual manner. This could prove to be a valuable tool.
Brilliant!!! Any small business who’s been burned knows the difference from someone who’s a good person and in troubole and someone who’s just trying to get away with robbing you. Kudo to these folks for doing this. I’m going there now.
I love it. But I always thought the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act didn’t allow it.
The biggest deadbeats in general are small contractors. But there’s also a lot of big corporations who are deadbeats as well.
Have to check out this site. Got some names I’d like to add.