Using Twitter for Debt Collection, Sort of (or Something About Rebecca Eckler’s $9,000 Twitter Quest)

Posted by Michael Klozotsky

This isn’t a story about debt collection. This isn’t a story about Twitter. This is a story about the dangers of approximation.

Earlier today, the Winnipeg Free Press published an article about Rebecca Eckler, Canadian author, Canadian Tooth Fairy fetishist, Canadian journalist, Canadian Slurpie-lover, Canadian blogger, (not Canadian bacon), Canadian wisher that Mother’s Day was a quarterly event, and now apparently Canadian amateur debt collector via Twitter.

It’s that last bit that has me a little concerned.

Let’s explore some background, shall we?

According to the Winnipeg Free Press story (which Ms. Eckler herself has been reTweeting today), publishing house Key Porter Books owes Ms. Eckler, the author of Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-be and The Lucky Sperm Club, $9,000 for writing the latter. At the beginning of October 2010, Key Porter announced that it was terminating 11 of its 17 employees. Then in January 2011, the company announced that it would temporarily suspend publishing operations. The Lucky Sperm Club was published on January 18, 2011, but is not yet available for purchase, perhaps because—you know—its publisher is in the proverbial crapper. (Note: as is true with most of this story, verifiable “facts” are hard to come by, but according to some media outlets and at least one hazy assertion on Ms. Eckler’s Twitter account, the author has paid $1,000 to buy back her own work in an attempt to distribute it via retailers).

Gentle as an effing Gordon Lambsy

According to its Publisher, Jordan Fenn, Key Porter is (or was) the “biggest publisher of hockey books in the world,” not to mention the North American publisher of Celebri-Chef Gordon Ramsay’s written ouevre. If even a modicum of Mr. Ramsay’s well-known public persona carries over into the business aspects of his literary ventures, I find it hard to believe that the [sic] @$$%%!@$ at Key Porter are holding on Gordon’s [sic] #&*^!}@ money in the same way they are alleged to have done with Ms. Eckler—or the world probably would have heard about it.

A few questions, various reflections about words, and a point or two on debt collection practices.

First, I do not claim familiarity in any way with the particulars of Ms. Eckler’s contractual agreements with Key Porter. Nor have I read anything that has led me to doubt that the company may indeed be trying to screw her out of nine grand. I wonder, however, if in hindsight Ms. Eckler might have considered jumping ship from Key Porter in 2010 when all but the transom of the company tugboat appeared to have already sunk below the surface of the bookselling sea.

Second, despite its precious headline and cute lede, is the Winnipeg Free Press story on Ms. Eckler really about debt collection? Not so much. The headline itself reads “Rebecca Eckler uses Twitter to dun publisher” and the piece opens with this sensational, ripped-from-the-headlines lede: “CANADIAN author and journalist Rebecca Eckler may inspire a new use for social media: debt collection.” Winnipeg Free Press, how do I deconstruct thee? Let me count the ways.

• A dunning notice by any other name would not smell as Tweet. Ms. Eckler’s Tweets are not dunning notices, at least not in any legal sense of the term. (This is the point where one of my readers is going to begin furiously typing into the comment field on this post something like, “OF COURSE the Winnipeg Free Press didn’t mean a literal dunning notice. DUH!”) Remember what I said at the outset of this post: approximations can be dangerous. And this headline approximates something Gene Hackman says to Rebecca Pidgeon in David Mamet’s Heist: He ain’t gonna shoot me? Then he hadn’t aughta point a gun at me. It’s insincere.

• The lede is worse than the headline. Despite the Winnipeg Free Press’ attempt to invent a debt collection-tied to-social media story where there isn’t one, in the real world (or maybe just in the United States) there are some actual, substantive discussions being held about the concept of social media as debt collection tool. That and, you know, like a touch of legal precedent being set on the matter in the Florida courts.

• Why is this type of yellow journalism dangerous? Because as I write this blog, the Winnipeg Free Press story is in fact showing up in Google News Alerts for “debt collection.” And I’d bet that somewhere on the Interwebs, someone right now is constructing sentences like “Debt collectors turn to Twitter” or “Soon collection agencies will be harassing debtors via Twitter.” Supposed news stories that rely on “kinda hypotheses” are, you see, kinda dangerous.

Third, the issue at hand isn’t really about “debt” in the formal sense of the word at all, at least not in the credit and collection industry meaning of the term. If true (and again, I have seen no evidence to suggest otherwise), Ms. Eckler is owed a promised sum of money by her publisher. But she’s not a creditor in the traditional sense of the word. What we’re talking about here is a breach of contract issue, not a delinquent receivable. The cure for that ill is not a debt collection process, but litigation. And according to reports, Ms. Eckler is somewhat familiar with that remedy, having sued writer-director Judd Apatow and NBC Universal for stealing parts of Knocked Up (Eckler’s memoir) to bring Katherine Heigl’s prosthetic baby-bump to the silver screen in the motion picture Knocked Up. Was Eckler’s legal action against Apatow & Universal unsuccessful? If so, did that lead her in the Key Porter debacle to exclaim, “To the Twitters!”? I’m not sure; but that doesn’t make Ms. Eckler a debt collector or her latest quest a debt collection tale. In what other ways do I know that Ms. Eckler isn’t a professional debt collector? Well:

• Ms. Eckler’s Tweets suggest that she believes Key Porter outsources the delivery of $9,000 checks via the Tooth Fairy. Ms. Eckler, commercial collections (at least in the US) are handled almost exclusively by unicorns.

• Ms. Eckler uses dirty words to collect debt. Don’t get me wrong; I love dirty words. I cried a little when the Winnipeg Free Press article declined to reprint some of Ms. Eckler’s Tweets because they contained language that could harm Canadian families (or something). But the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in the US doesn’t look kindly on debt collectors’ use of profane language. Are regulatory checks on the accounts receivable management industry in Canada more lax than they are in America? Are Canadian debt collectors certified cuss-mongers? I rather doubt it.

• As early as yesterday, just a few days into her collection campaign via Twitter, Ms. Eckler already began to back down from her original demand notice/Tweet, reducing the amount of the “debt” she was seeking from Key Porter to $8,000. As any seasoned debt collector would advise: Too soon. It’s too soon to capitulate, Ms. Eckler. Stand your ground.

Tooth Fairy? Book Fairy? Debt Fairy? from @rebeccaeckler on the Twitters.

In addition to teaching, I put myself through graduate school as a tap puller, wine pourer, and cocktail man in various pubs, restaurants, and dive bars in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. One commonality among all of those establishments was a list (typically published in the back of the house) of scoundrels known to author bad checks. In theory, I suppose, these lists were supposed to alert staff to be on the lookout for those that had wronged the business, but the lists had no practical applications. Was one supposed to cross reference every check we accepted against the naughty list, causing the unavoidable delay in service that was sure to incur the wrath of the woman at table seven who “needs another iced tea right freaking now”? No. Nor did we ever pursue these scofflaws beyond the tavern door, because—well, we were trying to do our jobs as bartenders.

There’s a lesson in my service industry allegory germane to Ms. Eckler’s own saga. Twitter it seems has become the 21^st century equivalent of the bad check list on the wall of a public house. A technological advancement—to be sure–but in my view, one that provides no greater likelihood of getting paid. I hope that Ms. Eckler ultimately brings home the Canadian bacon she’s entitled to. I just don’t think Twitter and kinda-sorta stories about debt collection are the best means to achieve her desired end.

Michael Klozotsky is the managing editor of insideARM.com and an all-sorts-of-subjects Tweeter on the Twitters as @mklozkgc. As a former bartender he believes that tipping those who work in the service industry is a Kantian categorical imperative.

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