If you are trying to locate the whereabouts of a family member that you have lost contact with, the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service may be able to help you.

For more information on the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service, please visit the link below:

Salvation Army Family Tracing Service

Skipease has released a handy list of top ten free people search tips and online people search sites for the general public as well as professionals on PRWeb. You are allowed to print, publish and distribute the list any way you wish without permission from Skipease.

You can view the press release @ People Search Tips and People Searches.

A unique, uncommon last name is as good as gold, when trying to find a person; and any last name with a history of locations that a person has lived is even better.

An uncommon last name can be used to do a last-name-only people search on WhitePages.com or DA Plus to find possible relatives for a person. All you have to do is leave the “First Name” field blank on your search. Even someone with a common last name and a history of living in smaller or rural areas can often be located this way. However, a common last-name-only search for large cities will usually return too many results to be useful. You would have to call too many people before you would likely find a relative of the person you are searching for.

In addition, the WhitePages.com people search allows you to search all states at once. So even if you don’t know past locations and addresses for a person with an uncommon last name, you can search all states at once to find the person or possible relatives to contact. Again, this will only work with uncommon last names, since common last names will return too many results to be useful.

Good luck with your people search and web search efforts.

The White Pages site has made it easier to do nearby / neighbor searches online.

If you have an old or current address for someone, but have been unsuccessful at contacting the person you are looking for at that address, neighbors can often shed light on the situation. Neighbors will often confirm whether or not the person still lives at the given address, move out dates etc. Some neighbors are more than willing to deliver a message to the person for you. Just be sure to follow the law when talking to neighbors, especially if you are a debt collector.

To use the White Pages nearby / neighbor search simply do a reverse address lookup or people search and then click the “Find Neighbors” link below your listing to locate possible neighbors for the given listing or address.

If you are a manager of a debt collections department for a company, you know the importance of early contact with delinquent debtors in receiving payments and protecting collateral. Unfortunately, many collection departments do not pay much attention to skip tracing efforts within the first 30 days of the collection process.

Accounts that roll into 30 day collections are often handled by automated dialer systems that will mindlessly dial wrong or disconnected numbers over and over, unless there is a process in place that allows collectors to report and correct system mistakes. Sometimes these wrong numbers are a simple data entry mistake that could be corrected by pulling the loan file and reviewing the application information for the original contact information.

Other times incorrect information was given on the loan application by the signer and cosigner on the loan, in which case it is very important to start skip trace work immediately to successfully locate the borrower and protect any collateral they may have.

In any case, you should have a system in place that catches these problems early on in the collection process. You may want to set up an early skip trace queu, where automated dialer collectors can send delinquent accounts with bad contact information to be worked manually outside of the automated system by one of your better skip tracers. Even providing your automated dialer collectors with a simple skip trace form that allows them to record potentially problematic accounts to be worked manually by a skilled skip tracer can benefit your collection efforts.

Remember, the name of the game is bringing as many delinquent accounts current as possible; protecting your company’s collateral and keeping bad debt chargeoffs to a minimum. To that end, early skip tracing efforts can prove invaluable to your debt collection efforts.