The Favor Bank works well when the people understand the rules and follow its guidelines.  Unfortunately, not everyone in this world is a stand up guy.  What should you do with someone who does not play by the rules?

This failure could range from a friend who refuses to do you a favor when you have performed favors for him in the past.  I have had the situation where I lent a neighbor my power washer  but this neighbor refused when I asked to borrow his 8 foot ladder. 

In addition, I have a friend who has helped people network when they were looking for a job.  Now that he is looking for a job himself, these so called friends that he has helped out in the past have neither offered nor actually helped my friend out. 

So what should we do with these violators?

The most obvious step is to remove them from your favor bank.  You need to look at their account as a lost asset so that your deposits into the favor bank were a loser investment.  So no new favors for this "friend."  Normally this does not really affect the violator.

You can take the high or the low road with your "friend."  As much as I would like to take the low road by confronting this person and demanding your favor, I usually go for the less emotionally What would you do?  One option is to raise the lack of neighborly spirit be shown by your "friend."  But you end up becoming a whining friend.

I think that the high road is to just write off this person and pray that karma catches up with your "friend."  For those you are religious, just follow the golden rule of treating others like you would like to be treated.  Very admirable traits (but for those of you are petty this will not be that satisfying).

Absent a blacklisting ability in the favor bank, I recommend that you write this off as bad debt.